HAVERFORD, Pa. – Katie Sullivan has qualified for the 1,500 meter race at the NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships which will be held later this week at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Sullivan will be making her second straight appearance in this event at the outdoor national championship. It will mark the seventh national championship appearance between the three running seasons for Haverford's Varsity Cup recipient and two-time All-American.
Sullivan will open her week with the 1,500 meter preliminaries on Thursday with those heats scheduled to go off at 2:45 p.m. local time (3:45 EST). With 22 qualifiers for each of the individual events, Sullivan will compete in the first heat on Thursday. The top four individual finishers from each heat, plus the next four fastest times, will advances to the 1,500 national championship which will start at 12:35 p.m. local time (1:35 p.m. EST) on Saturday.
The Fords' senior qualified for the national championship with a personal best time of 4:30.71 at Swarthmore's Last Chance Meet. That mark, which was the top time in the Mideast Region this year, has her seeded fourth overall heading into the event.
Sullivan will be Haverford's first 1,500 meter qualifier to advance to the NCAA Championships for a second straight season. Each of the Fords first five qualifiers in this event raced just once at this distance during the outdoor national championships. Sullivan placed 16th in the heats last spring. Nora Weathers '16, who is the only runner in school history to post a faster 1,500 meter time than Sullivan, was Haverford's last All-American in this event as she placed sixth during the 2015 championship.
Sullivan is the eighth runner in program history to represent the Fords on multiple occasions at the outdoor national track & field championships. She is the first athlete since Annick Lamar '08 to represent Haverford at multiple national outdoor championships. As a program, women's outdoor track & field has a combined 31 national qualifiers. Of those 31 entrants, 17 have gone on to earn All-American accolades which are presented to the top eight finishers in each event.
A member of the 2016 third place DMR and eighth place finisher in the 2017 mile during her indoor track & field season career, Sullivan is looking for her first All-American finish on the outdoor surface. She is a two-time All-Mideast Region selection, two-time Centennial Conference Champion, and six-time All-Centennial Conference performer in her already decorated outdoor career. Across all three running seasons, she is a seven-time all-region performer, seven-time first-team All-Centennial Conference performer, and has garner a total of 14 all-conference accolades throughout her career.
Video and live result links to follow all of the action this weekend are available at the top of this article.