DELAWARE, Ohio – Haverford College senior Lucas Fuentes raced to a 15th-place finish in the 3,000 meter steeplechase Friday night at the NCAA 2011 Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championship hosted by Ohio Wesleyan University.

Earlier in the day, Christina Neilson posted a time of 59.10 seconds in the preliminary heats of the women's 400 meter dash but failed to qualify for Saturday's championship final, finishing in 22nd place.

Fuentes, making his first appearance in the NCAA track championship after earning All-America status at the 2010 men's cross country nationals, posted a time of 9 minutes, 21.54 seconds in the timed final won by Dickinson College's Kent Pecora (8:51.85).

The championship meet concludes Saturday at OWU with five Fords from the men's team competing.

The final of the 1,500 is slated for a 1:50 p.m. start and the Haverford trio of Tim Schoch, Eric Arnold and Ivo Milic-Strkalj will vie for the win. The Fords were three of 12 competitors that moved past Friday afternoon's preliminary heats into the championship final. The spread between the top qualifier and the 12th-fastest was just 0.73 seconds.

The men's 5,000 is scheduled to begin at 4:25 p.m. with seniors Joseph Carpenter and Anders Hulleberg qualifying for the field of 20. Carpenter enters the timed final seeded seventh while Hulleberg comes into the race seeded ninth.