EUGENE, Ore. — Barbara Nwaba finished 12th with 5382 points in the NCAA Championship heptathlon, narrowly missing the All-American honors bestowed upon the top-11 finishers. Thursday was the second day of competition at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
Nwaba was in fifth after Day One but was unable to post an event score over 800 points on Day Two. She began to fall behind the the long jump, where her mark of 17’5.50″ (5.32m) only mustered 648 points. She rebounded with 578 points in the javelin, which is notoriously the lowest-scoring heptathlon event, after a good throw of 116’0″ (35.35m). Her 800m was also solid but not quite up to her usual standard, as she clocked a 2:22.12 for 795 points.
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The top eight overall finishers and the top eight American finishers received All-American honors, and unfortunately the cutoff for American athletes this year was 11th place. Nwaba’s 5382 points were only 33 behind the 11th-place finisher.
Nwaba’s performance caps off a season where she won the Big West Conference Championship in the heptathlon, with a UCSB record of 5552 points.
Three Gauchos will compete at the NCAA Championships tomorrow. Ryan Martin will run in the 800m final after setting the UCSB record in the preliminaries, Julian deRubira will run in the 3000m steeplechase final in the preliminaries, and Kayla Smith will look to build on her 51 foot personal best in the shot put.
