Last year, only one SFU athlete qualified for the indoor track and field national championship — senior Sarah Sawatzky, who is not eligible this year.
So when head coach Brit Townsend stated after one event that the team should have an even better result, it came as a surprise. “We’re off to a good start,” she told The Peak. “We had only one person qualify for the NCAA indoors last year, and I’m convinced we have two after [our first event].”
The Clan put on a dominant performance at their first indoor event — the University of Washington Preview held on January 17. Senior Lindsey Butterworth led the team, and the NCAA, with a time of 4:44.80. This feat earned her both the Great Northwest Athletic Conference (GNAC) and the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association athlete of the week awards.
The team’s performance was good enough to earn nine athletes provisional standards — the minimum time for a runner to be ranked. Many Clan athletes put up GNAC top five performances. “We had lots of personal best performances,” explained Townsend.
Most notably, the teams that the Clan faced consisted of both NCAA Division I and II talent.
The relatively short indoor track season will continue until February 21, when the indoor national championship wraps up. Then the outdoor season begins, with the UBC Open held March 28, and continues until late May.
The Clan’s goals for the outdoor track season are the same as indoors: to get more athletes to qualify for the national championship. Last season, two runners made the cut — Sawatzky, and then-freshman Oliver Jorgensen.
“I’m looking to improve on both of those stats this year,” Townsend noted. “We have to progress slowly and keep improving, and I’m confident we’ll have more than that — in both categories.”
The focus of the Clan will be more on the aforementioned individual titles. The nature of track and field allows teams to send an unlimited amount of qualified athletes into competition, meaning that teams with a higher quantity of national championship-qualifying team members will win. As relatively new members of the NCAA, having sent only one athlete indoors and two outdoors, the Clan could not compete as a team last year.
“My goal is that we will have a national champion indoors — an individual championship,” she said.
