ALLENDALE, Mich. – After posting nine Provisionals for the NCAA Championships in yesterday's invite events, the Colorado School of Mines track and field teams collected two additional qualifying marks and several top finishes in Saturday's open portion of Grand Valley State's Big Meet at the Kelly Family Sports Center in Allendale, Michigan.

Senior Hannah Schuster posted the fastest 800 result in school history, bettering her previous personal-record and Provisional time of 2:18.08 from the season-opening Potts Indoor Invite with a 2:12.82 to take second out of 65 runners. Her time leads the RMAC by nearly three seconds and ranks seventh-best across all of Division II.

Classmate Marie Patton just missed adding her name to the Mines top-five, taking 20th overall behind a new collegiate-best time of 2:21.30.

Similar to the men's 5000 on Friday, Mines made its presence known at the top of Saturday's 61-runner, 3000 standings as the Orediggers placed six runners with personal-bests in the top-nine, led by junior Andrew Epperson in second with a Provisional mark and the program's fourth-fastest time of 8:27.43.

Close behind in third was senior Russell Drummond in 8:28.87, followed by red-shirt freshman Marty Andrie in fifth (8:30.19), junior Frank Socha in sixth (8:32.89) and red-shirt freshmen Drew Kerschieter and Derek Alcorn in eighth and nine with respective times of 8:35.05 and 8:35.37.

With his second Provisional in hand from yesterday's eighth place showing in the 3000, junior Tyler Curtis timed a personal-record in the shorter mile, taking 11th of 49 competitors in 4:22.04.

With the RMAC Indoor Championships set for less than two weeks from today, the men and women conclude the regular season at home next Saturday, Feb. 16 with the Joe Davies Collegiate Open at Steinhauer Fieldhouse.

GVSU BIG MEET INFORMATION PAGE