SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Washington State's Brock Eager became the first Cougar to qualify and advance to the NCAA Championships during the first day of the NCAA West Region Preliminary Rounds at Hornet Stadium on the Sacramento State campus. Of the 48 competitors in each event, the top 12 advance to the NCAA Championships, June 6-9, at Hayward Field in Eugene.
 
Eager, a redshirt junior from Renton, Wash., threw the hammer a distance of 225-feet 2 inches (68.64m) which was the third-best on the day. Eager's PR hammer throw is 228-3 (69.57m) achieved at the Stanford Invitational last month. Thursday in Sacramento, Eager's other throws were distances of 210-7 (64.18m) and 220-8 (67.26m). This will be Eager's second trip to the NCAA Championships after placing 14th in 2017 with a throw of 217-1 (66.16m) to earn All-America Second Team honors.
 
Freshman Sander Moldau (Rakvere, Estonia) punched his ticket to compete in the men's pole vault at the NCAA Championships. Moldau, the 2018 Pac-12 champion, cleared his final height of 16-10 3/4 (5.15m) on his first try but missed on three attempts at 17-2 3/4 (5.25m). His efforts today were tied for ninth-best and the top 12 advance to the NCAA final in Eugene, June 5-9.
 
WSU will have two Cougars in the women's 400m hurdles quarterfinals Friday, May 25 at 7:15 p.m. Alissa Brooks-Johnson (redshirt senior, Doty, Wash.) advanced by finishing third in the third heat with a time of 59.49 seconds, when the top three finishers in each of the six heats and then the next six fastest times advance. Stephanie Cho (junior, Vancouver, B.C. Canada) ran a PR time of 58.90 which was the fifth-fastest of the non-automatic qualifying times and she will join Brooks-Johnson in the quarterfinals.
 
Chandler Teigen (junior, Anatone, Wash.) advanced to the men's 1500m quarterfinals (Sat., May 26 at 6:30 p.m.) by finishing third in the second heat (top five finishers in each of four heats automatically advanced). Teigen's time was 3 minutes 46.30 seconds, which was the ninth-fastest time in the first round of 48 runners.
 
Kaili Keefe (sophomore, Yakima, Wash.) advanced to the women's 1500m quarterfinals (Sat., May 26, 6:45 p.m.) after placing third in the third heat. Keefe's time of 4:23.21 was 15th-fastest in the prelims.
 
Senior Vallery Korir (Iten, Kenya) finished 15th in the women's 10,000m in a PR and school record time of 33:16.89, bettering her school record time of 33:52.28 set at the 2018 Stanford Invitational.
 
The NCAA West Preliminary Rounds continue Friday and Saturday, May 25-26, in Sacramento. In addition to the Cougars who qualified for the quarterfinals Thursday, Friday competition will see WSU athletes in the men's 110m and women's 100m hurdles, men's and women's 400m hurdles, men's and women's steeplechase and the women's pole vault.

 THEY SAID:
Wayne Phipps, WSU Director of Cross Country/Track & Field, said, "We had an awesome first day! We added two more to the national championship finals as Brock Eager progressed well throughout the competition and Sander battled very tricky winds to qualify as a true freshman. Chandler and Kaili both ran very intelligent races in the 1500m and both closed very well - Chandler's last 800m was 1:55 and his last 400m was 55 seconds - to advance easily. Stephanie and Alissa also ran strong races to advance to tomorrow's final in the 400m hurdles. We capped off the day with Vallery Korir smashing her own school record and running a time that would have qualified for the NCAA final in every other year."