Dressel Finishes Career As Second-Team All-American

EUGENE – Colorado track and field senior John Dressel concluded his lustrous career for the Buffs here Wednesday evening at the NCAA Championships in the finals of the men's 10,000-meter run.
 
Dressel finished 12th overall in the second-best time in CU history at 28:03.87. The senior was just two seconds off the 41-year old NCAA meet record of 28:01.30 held by Suleiman Nyambui of Texas-El Paso in 1979. Patrick Dever of Tulsa won the race in a new meet record of 27:41.87.
 
The senior started out the race in 10th, sitting there through the first 10 minutes of the race. A group of 14 athletes broke out through the 5,000-meter mark around the 14-minute mark, an incredibly fast pace that was quickly rivaling the NCAA meet record. With four laps to go the pack broke out with just 11 runners as Dressel led the chase pack nine seconds behind the lead pack in 12th. Dressel finished in that position, nearly catching Iowa State's Wesley Kiptoo who led for most of the race.

"That was a hard one to process," said head coach Mark Wetmore. "John ran his fastest ever, and one of the fastest ever for anyone at CU, maybe second fastest, but 12th will certainly be a disappointment for him, and he will just miss the Trials standard by a few seconds.  He had a great career for Colorado, many time All-American, and never ran poorly on a big stage. He has been a great team member. I think he has still some big running coming."
 
Dressel's mark destroyed his previous best by nearly 40 seconds and took down Ted Castaneda's second-best time in CU history by 27 seconds. Dressel's mark trails only Dathan Ritzenhein's school record of 27:38.50.
 
Dever took the race in the final 60 meters, outkicking the NCAA XC Champion, BYU's Connor Mantz, from the inside for the national title with a 40-second personal best and a new NCAA meet record. In total, 10 athletes broke the NCAA meet record and 15 of the 24 athletes ran personal best times, far outside the normal slow strategic running that comes at most NCAA Championships.
 
Dressel was the lone male representative and now will hand off the show to the Colorado women. All seven athletes are in action tomorrow with six in prelims. Abby Nichols will race the women's 10,000 final tomorrow evening at 7:08 p.m. MT.