Buffaloes Separate To Stanford And Air Force

BOULDER – The University of Colorado track and field program heads to the Stanford Invitational and Front Range Open at the Air Force Academy this weekend.
 
The distance squad will head to Stanford to compete late Friday night, while the rest of the team will head to Air Force Saturday. Friday's events will be streamed on FloTrack.
 
Colorado is coming off a week at the Texas Relays highlighted by a pair of third-place finishes by the 4x400-meter relays and Avery McMullen scoring a personal best in the heptathlon.
 
With only two meets in hand, Colorado has a handful of athletes in qualifying position early for the NCAA West Preliminaries. McMullen leads the way for CU as the fourth-ranked athlete in the heptathlon, followed by both 4x400-meter relays ranked in the top-12. Colorado has a total of 23 performances currently ranked in the top-45 in the West.
 
For the distance squad, 16 athletes will be heading to Stanford to compete in the 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000-meter runs. Noah Hibbard and Rachel McArthur are the lone representatives in the 1,500-meter run, while Andrew Kent, Jace Aschbrenner, Abby Nichols, Gabrielle Orie and Hannah Miniutti are racing in the 5,000-meter run.
 
The 10,000 will see a lot of Buffs in action with five men and three women. Austin Vancil, Alec Hornecker, Hunter Appleton, Paxton Smith and Charlie Sweeney are the five men racing late, while Emily Covert, India Johnson and Kaitlyn Barthell will form the women's trio.
 
The Front Range Open will have 29 athletes competing in the throws, jumps, hurdles and sprints. The hammer throw will see nine athletes competing between the men and women with Lars Atkinson and Dominique Williams as the only throwers competing in three events.
 
The combined event athletes will run a plethora of events from Jada Green in the shot put to Jackson Meyer in both horizontal jumps. Six men and six women will compete in 27 different events with the track events including the 100, 200 and both short hurdles. Colorado has athletes in all of the jumping disciplines while Kara Lucyk rounds it all out with the 800-meter run.
 
Moving to the sprints and hurdles, six athletes will compete with five doing a 400 in either the hurdle race or open. Nick Nuhfer and Kaleah Mitchell-Ruff are the only athletes not hurdling, with Nuhfer competing in the 200 and 400 while Mitchell-Ruff competes in the 100 and 200.
 
Colorado closes out the 2022 home schedule the following weekend in the 2022 Colorado Invitational April 8th and 9th.