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Floyd Ross competes at the Don Kirby Elite Invitational in the triple jump Feb. 10 at the Albuquerque Convention Center. Ross finished 8th place the NCAA National Championship in Nampa, Idaho.

Long jumper takes NCAA title

Earning first place was not on UNM long jumper Kendall Spencer’s mind going into the national indoor championship track and field meet on March 9.

But Spencer, a sophomore, won the event with a leap of 26 feet, 3.5 inches at the NCAA Championships in Nampa, Idaho and was named a first-team All-American.

“I had no idea I was going to have a big enough jump to win it,” he said. “All I was trying to do was make it to the finals.”
Junior triple jumper Floyd Ross and senior distance runner Sarah Waldron joined Spencer on the first-team All-American.

Senior distance runner Ross Millington and junior distance runner Josephine Moultrie were named to the second-team All-American.

To be named an All-American first-team, players must finish in the top eight of their respective events and between ninth and 16th place for second team. Head track and field coach Joe Franklin said it’s great for the program to have five athletes be recognized.

“Those three being first-team All-American is pretty special and impressive,” he said. “Obviously the second-team is impressive and a great job, but the first-team is obviously a step above and Kendall Spencer being a national champion is very rare.”

Spencer is the first national champion at UNM since 2010, when former Lobo, Lee Emanuel, received the title back-to-back in the mile event. Spencer’s jump at the national championships was enough to give him a UNM and MWC record.

Spencer was dealing with injuries during a majority of his time as a Lobo, but Franklin said the hard work he put in during rehab helped him as everything came together in the final meet.

“Once his injury got better this year, he started to see the benefit of all of the consistent work that he did while he was injured,” Franklin said. “The odds are so minuscule to be a national champion and the accomplishment is so immense, it’s just incredible.”

Ross and Waldron have similar stories and were both lucky to even be competing after qualifying on March 3 in a last-chance meet.
The last-chance meet was created to give athletes one final attempt to make the time to qualify for the NCAA championships.

Waldron qualified for the championships in the 5,000-meter race, and Ross made the cut on his final triple jump of the day.

The same luck was with them in the national meet with Ross jumping 51 feet, 10.5 inches on his sixth and final jump to seal eighth place. Waldron narrowly finished in eighth place as well with a time of 16:07.04 in the 5,000-meter race.

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Millington earned his second-team All-American for the second straight year with his 13th place finish in the 3,000-meter race with a time of 8:08.73.

Franklin said Millington was expecting a higher finish.
“We need to make sure we put him in a position where he can accomplish what he wants to,” he said. “I know he wants to be better than what he was last Saturday night.”

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