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Rosemary Chukwuma and Juliet Cherubet lead the Texas Tech track banner day

Juliet Cherubet, a freshman track and field athlete at Texas Tech, qualified for the NCAA outdoor championships in two events on Saturday, and her teammate Rosemary Chukwuma ran the eighth-fastest women's 100 meters in NCAA history.

Their performances were the highlight for the Tech women on the final day of the four-day NCAA West Preliminaries in Fayetteville, Arkansas. It was a standout day for the Red Raiders, who placed 13th in seven individual events and one relay to qualify for the national meet.

Of the Tech women, three each qualified for the 100-meter run and the triple jump, and two each for the high jump and the 100-meter hurdles.

The NCAA Championships will be held June 5-8 in Eugene, Oregon.

Cherubet set an indoor record in the women's 1,500 meters by circling the John McDonnell track in 4 minutes, 9.04 seconds. Christin Wurth-Thomas set the old record of 4:12.70 in 2008, the year she was an Olympic finalist.

Cherubet later qualified for the 5,000 meters, running 16:01.65 to finish eighth.

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Chukwuma beat her school record in the 100-meter dash, running 10.88 seconds in legal wind conditions to finish second overall. She beat the 2024 Olympics qualifying standard of 11.07 seconds and became the second-fastest Nigerian woman of all time behind Blessing Okagbare, a former Texas Tech volunteer and master's graduate.

Earlier, Chukwuma had jumped to first place in a heat and third overall as the anchor runner on the Red Raiders' 400-meter relay team. Serena Clark, Success Umukoro, Alyssa Colbert and Chukwuma carried the baton around in 42.77 seconds, the second-best time ever for Tech.

The East Regional Championships in Lexington, Kentucky, and the West Regional Championships in Fayetteville whittled down the fields from 48 competitors in most individual events at each site to 12 qualifiers for Eugene. Joining Chukwuma in the 100 meters were Colbert, who finished sixth overall with a wind-aided 11.03, and Umukoro, who finished ninth overall with a personal best 11.09.

In the triple jump, Anne-Suzanna Fosther-Katta, Ruta Lasmane and Grace Oshiokpu finished fourth, fifth and 12th, respectively, with jumps of 45 feet, 4 1/2 inches, 45-2 1/2 inches and 43-11 3/4 inches, all in legal wind conditions. Fosther-Katta and Oshiokpu's jumps were personal records for the senior from France and the freshman from Nigeria.

In the high jump, Tech newcomers Temitope Adeshina and Claire Lowrey had achieved a distance of 6:0.5 when the competition ended with the remaining 12 qualifiers.

Tech's other qualifiers were Zoe Burleson, ninth in the discus (187-10), and Destiny Smith and Naomi Krebs, 11th and 12th in the 100-meter hurdles with wind-aided times of 13.03 and 13.13, respectively.

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