REBELS AIM HIGH AT NCAA WEST REGIONALS THIS WEEKEND
IG: @unlvtrackandcc | X: @UNLVTrackCC | Schedule
Coming off of several strong performances at the recent Mountain West Outdoor Track & Field Championships, the UNLV track & field team gear up for the upcoming NCAA West Regionals Championships as their next step of the postseason. The team will travel out to Fayetteville, Ark., for the event, their farthest trip out east during the 2024 outdoor season.
The Scarlet & Gray will send seven student-athletes in total to the event, improving their mark from the 2023 season of only four individuals in total. They’ll compete across five different events, a majority of them taking place on Thursday’s session. The Rebels will run the 100m hurdles, 100m and 200m on Thursday, May 23 with the 4x100m relay and the high jump on Saturday, May 25.
The Rebels’ run at the regional championships will start with Jaydea Carter in the women’s 100m hurdles, qualifying for the championships after setting a new personal-record at the Mountain West Championships, posting a 13.45 time that ranks her inside the meet’s top-20 competitors. She’ll look for a spot in the quarterfinals on Saturday night after the first round at 3 p.m. CT on Thursday.
Kennedi Porter will compete in the other two individual events on the track for the Scarlet & Gray, taking off on the 100m (4 p.m. CT) and the 200m (5:45 p.m. PT) on Thursday’s first-round session. Porter heads into the Regional championships after winning both events at the Mountain West Outdoor Championships earlier in the month, becoming the first Rebel to win the conference title in the 200m since 2002 and the 100 since 2005. She’ll aim to get herself qualified into the Quarterfinal rounds on Saturday, the 100m starting at 6:35 p.m. PT and the 200m at 7:50 p.m. PT.
UNLV will have two solidified events on Saturday, first starting with the women’s high jump at 2 p.m. CT. The team will have Grace Cunningham representing the Scarlet & Gray in the event, qualifying with a season-best mark at 1.80m (5′ 10.75″) that she earned during the Desert Heat Classic. Her top height ranks her within the top-five competitors entering the Regional Championships, aiming for a top spot to enter into the NCAA Championships.
The program’s final event will be the 4x100m relay, taking place at 5 p.m. PT. The relay team marked the third-fastest time in program history back at the Desert Heat Classic at the end of April, setting a 44.02 time that is just .01 seconds away from rounding out the top five relays in the region. The team will bring their squad of Porter, Chinyere Okoro, Shakeira Bowra and AnnaKay Maitland in for the team race, also bringing in Sophia Alexander as an alternate for the group.
To get updates on all things Rebel track & field, links to the championships can be found on the team’s schedule page. You can also get live updates on how the Scarlet & Gray are faring on the team’s X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram accounts.