Bowling Green State University Athletics
Friday, May 24
Greensboro, NC
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NCAA East Preliminary Round
Pleger Headed To North Carolina For NCAA Regionals
May 21, 2013 | Women's Track and Field
Live results and live video web stream
Greensboro, N.C. – Bowling Green State University redshirt sophomore Brooke Pleger will attempt to become the first BGSU student-athlete to qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field National Championships since 2005 when she competes in the hammer throw Friday at 10 a.m.
Pleger will compete against 47 other competitors at Irwin Belk Track at Aggie Stadium with hopes of becoming one of 12 to advance to the national championship. The meet is hosted by North Carolina A&T and is one of two regionals. The top 12 finishers in each regional will compete for the hammer throw national championship June 5-8 in Eugene, Ore.
Currently ranked fifth in the country in the hammer throw, Pleger is the No. 2 seed for the East Regional. The 48 competitors are split into four flights of 12 athletes each based on their best marks of the year. Pleger will compete in the final heat of the day with the other 11 top-seeded competitors.
Pleger threw a season and career-best 219-feet-9 at the Northeast Ohio Quad on April 5. Only Princeton's Julia Ratcliffe has thrown further at 225-9. Pleger's worst mark of the year was a throw of 212-6 at the Raleigh Relays. No other competitor in the field was as consistently strong. In fact, only four other competitors in the East Region field have topped 212-6 this year. Penn State's Melissa Kurzdorfer enters as the No. 12 seed with a season-best throw of 200-0.
| COMPARING THE TOP FIVE | |||
| Name (School) | Season-Best Mark | Season-Worst Mark | Average Mark |
| Julia Ratcliffe (Princeton) | 68.80m | 63.99m | 66.50m |
| Brooke Pleger (BGSU) | 66.99m | 64.76m | 65.68m |
| Brittany Funk (Akron) | 66.08m | 60.37m | 63.36m |
| Alexis Thomas (Ohio State) | 65.48m | 62.55m | 63.90m |
| Victoria Flowers (Connecticut) | 64.78m | 59.57m | 62.58m |
Head-to-Head
Brooke Pleger has competed against most of her top competition at least once this year and has consistently defeated them. She has not faced top-seeded Julia Ratcliffe, but has defeated No. 3 seed Brittany Funk at both the Northeast Ohio Quad and the MAC Championships. She defeated Ohio State's Alexis Thomas, the No. 4 seed, at the Ashland Alumni Open and beat fifth-seeded Victoria Flowers of Connecticut at the Raleigh Relays.
The Names Will Remain The Same
While Brooke Pleger is just a sophomore at Bowling Green, she will likely be facing much of the same competition in years to come. Princeton's Julia Ratcliffe, the top seed at the East Regional, is just a freshman and third-seeded Brittany Funk of Akron is a junior. Both Ohio State's Alexis Thomas and Connecticut's Victoria Flowers are seniors but the rest of the top 10 in the field are all underclassmen.
#MACtion
The East Regional hammer throw will have a distinct Mid-American Conference flavor. Two of the top three seeds (Brooke Pleger and Akron's Brittany Funk) both hail from the MAC, but the league is much deeper than that. Kent State's Jackie Leppelmeier is ranked 14th and Buffalo's Shant'e White is 15th. Buffalo's Erin Miller is 20th and Eastern Michigan's Lydia Gomez-Diaz is 25th. Akron's Megan Dornisch (32nd) and Alexis Cook (41st) will also compete at the meet. In all, that makes eight competitors from the MAC in the field.
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