NCAA Division III Indoor Championships Website

Birmingham, Ala. - The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse men's track and field team is in 12th-place after the first day of action at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Indoor Championships Friday at Birmingham CrossPlex. The Eagles have 7.0 team points while Massaschusetts Institue of Technology leads with 13.0. Loras College (Iowa) is in second-place with 11.0 points while SUNY Geneseo, Carthage College (Wis.), UW-Whitewater and the University of Southern Maine are tied for third with 10.0 points. 

Widener University (Pa.), Johns Hopkins University (Md.), Ithaca College (N.Y.) and Virginia Wesleyan University are tied for eighth with 8.0 points. A total of 34 teams have scored points. 

Birmingham-Southern College and City of Birmingham are serving as hosts of the championships. 

UWL's Ethan Gregg and Logan Larson both earned NCAA III All-America honors on Friday. Gregg placed third (13:53.93) in the 5,000-meter run while Larson was eighth (15-11) in the pole vault. It is the first career All-America awards for both. 

The Eagles' Aiden Williams finished 10th (60-8 3/4) in Friday's weight throw while Sam Blaskowski was 12th (23-0) in the long jump. 

Elias Ritzke, Caden Pearce, Cael Schoemann, Aidan Matthai were 10th (9:56.88) in the distance medley relay.

UWL's Nolan Seaberg is in 17th-place with 2,489 points after the first four events in the heptathlon. He competed in the 60-meter dash, long jump, shot put and high jump on Friday. The heptathlon concludes on Saturday in the 60-meter hurdles, pole vault and 1,000-meter run. 

In preliminary track action, Blaskowski advanced to Saturday's 60-meter dash final with an NCAA Division III meet record time of 6.67 on Friday. He broke the meet record of 6.68 set by Thurgood Dennis of UW-Eau Claire in 2014. Blaskowski owns the NCAA Division III record with a time of 6.65 set at the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) Championships on February 24-25. He also advanced to Saturday's 200-meter dash final on Friday with a preliminary time of 21.20, the second-fastest time in the preliminaries. 

Luke Schroeder advanced in the 60-meter hurdles (fifth-fastest time of 8.14), but failed to advance in the 200-meter dash (21.70). 

Ryder Smith (6.88) and Spencer Reichart (6.90) failed to advance in the 60-meter dash.

The Eagles' 4x400-meter relay of Addison Hill, Tyler Backes, Payton Flood and Chase Doornink advanced to Saturday's final after running 3:14.69 in Friday's preliminaries.

UWL has won an NCAA Division III record 18 indoor titles, including 11 of the last 19.  The Eagles have a nation-leading 33 national championships overall (18 indoor, 15 outdoor).  UWL has finished in the top-five in 34 of a possible 35 indoor national championships. 

Action continues Saturday, March 11 at 10 a.m.