PROVO — BYU’s rising star and Team USA Olympian will get another chance at a missed opportunity in Friday’s 3,000-meter men’s steeplechase final.
Of course, to get there James Corrigan had to make it through Wednesday’s semifinals on the opening day of the NCAA outdoor track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon.
Check, and check.
Corrigan strolled into the finals of the 3,000-meter steeplechase, finishing fourth in his heat and No. 4 overall with a qualifying time of 8:24.97.
The junior Browerton Award finalist and returning U.S. Olympian in the event opened his stride to stay well within in the top-five automatic qualifiers from each of two heats while Iowa State freshman Joash Ruto won the semifinal heats with a personal-best time of 8:22.94.
“Today was definitely a quicker one,” Corrigan said. “I was glad, if anything, to just be able to get through safe.”
Corrigan said he “left with a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth” after finishing ninth at last year’s NCAA championships for second-team All-American honors. He obviously made up for most disappointments with a third-place finish at last year’s USATF Olympic Team Trials that helped set him up for a spot on Team USA at the Paris Summer Games.
But it left Corrigan with one of his main goals: a chance to “put it together when it really matters” in collegiate competition.
“We planned it so we can peak at the right time,” Corrigan said in the post-race mixed zone. “The race you really care about is the NCAA finals, which I’m running in two days. I think I’ve hit my strides where it really matters.”
Weber State steeplechaser Peter Visser finished 17th in the event in 8:40.84.
In another qualifier, BYU’s 4×400-meter relay team of Eli Hazlett. Josh Taylor, Jonah Heimuli and Trey Jackson squeezed into Friday’s finals with a ninth-place time of 3:03.83. The Big 12 runners-up with the fifth-fastest time in program history took off down the stretch, securing qualification on time by .17 seconds over conference rival Arizona State.
Arkansas cleared the top time of the semifinals in 3:02.53, followed by USC (3:02.76) and Texas A&M (3:03.09).
“These guys set me up well,” said Jackson, who anchored BYU to its first 4×400-meter finals appearance in 10 years. “I just thought about them coming down the home stretch, how much they’ve put into the season, and I thought, I want to be able to do it again.”
Utah Valley’s 4×100-meter relay team of Gavin Stafford, Cameron Franklin, Kade Thompson and Gabe Remy clocked a season-best time of 38.90 — just .19 seconds behind USC for the final qualifying spot for Friday’s finals.
It was the first-ever 4×100-meter relay team to compete at the national meet in school history for the Wolverines, who earned second-team All-American honors with the 10th-place finish. Their 38.90 was the second-fastest among non-power conference relay teams in the semifinals, trailing only South Florida’s 38.12 that finished second only to Auburn (37.97).
In one of six men’s finals on the day — and the only one on the track — BYU’s Creed Thompson finished eighth in the 10,000 meters in 29:11.44. Teammate Joey Nokes was 14th in 29:19.76, both behind New Mexico freshman Ishmael Kipkurui, the collegiate record holder who finished first in 29:07.70.
Thompson, who holds the No. 2 mark in the 5,000 meter and No. 6 in the 10K in BYU history, earned first-team All-American honors for the first time in his collegiate outdoor career. Nokes, a senior from Riverton, added second-team All-American honors for the second time in his career after finishing 10th in the indoor 5K last y ear.
BYU senior Danny Bryant finished sixth in the shot put, hurling the stone 19.71 meters (64 feet, 8 inches) for first-team All-America honors, a mark that improved on his 13th-rated throw after the NCAA West regionals.
“I had a big breakout season last year, and I’m very happy to have another first-team All-American under my belt,” said Bryant, who departs BYU with the No. 3 mark in program history in the outdoor shot put in 20.02 meters (65-8.25). “That’s a really good way to finish my collegiate career. I’m really happy with it.”
Utah State’s Logan Hammer cleared a mark of 5.33 meters (17-5 3/4) to tie for 13th in the pole vault. The junior from Nampa, Idaho owns the Aggies’ program and Mountain West records in the event, and collected his third career All-American honors — the first for the program since Dillon Maggard and Clay Lambourne compiled their ninth and fifth, respectively, in 2018.
Records began falling early Wednesday when Mississippi State’s Peyton Bair, who served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arizona and Mexico, broke his own national record with a time of 10.25 seconds in the 100-meter portion of the decathlon.
The junior from Kimberly, Idaho, is going for a season multi-event sweep after winning the indoor championship in the winter, and leads all decathletes with 4,479 points after the first day.
Bair punctuated the first day of competition with a career-best time of 46.00 in the 400 meter — a time that would rank as the fifth-fastest time in world athletics.
BYU’s Ben Barton finished second in the 400-meter portion in 46.59, helping the Big 12 champion and Indoor school record-holder in the heptathlon to 4,190 points and third place.
BYU sophomore Jaden Roskelley was seventh in the decathlon with 4,062 points, paced by a fifth-place finish in the high jump with a leap of 2.04 meters (6 feet, 8 1/4 inches).
The NCAA women’s outdoor track and field championships begin Thursday, followed by Friday’s men’s finale and Saturday’s women’s championships in Eugene.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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