Weber State senior John Coyle placed 11th at the NCAA Division I West Preliminary Round’s steeplechase with a time of 8:41.64. After the race, he thought he would advance to the finals in his post-race interview, but then had second thoughts. As it turns out, he was the penultimate person to punch his ticket to Eugene for the National Championship next weekend.

Looking back at the last few years, Coyle’s time would have safely advanced him into the next round. We traced back results from the last 10 years and found quite the drop in time by the last man headed to the National Championship.

Year	Name	School	Time
2013	Curtis Carr	BYU	8:41.70
2012	Mike Hardy	Weber State	8:51.66
2011	Rick Elliot	Arkansas	8:52.70
2010	Gilbert Limo	Texas Tech	8:54.26
2009	Sam Ahlbeck	WSU	8:58.92
2008	Mike Powers	Santa Barbara	8:48.18
2007	Chandler Goodwin	BYU	8:49.51
2006	Chandler Goodwin	BYU	9:04.99
2005	Erik Emilsson	UCLA	8:42.16
2004	Luke Llamas	Cal Poly	8:51.67
2003	Brett Holts	Oregon	8:50.70

It should be noted that before 2010, the top five in each of the four regions were guaranteed spots in the final. From 2003 to 2009, the athlete noted is the fifth place finisher from the West region that year. (Midwest Results were very hard to come by. If you can find them, please feel free to email us.) Results compiled by Chris Chavez and Mitch Kastoff.

The qualifying mark to compete at the United States Championships in Des Moines is 8:40.00. Wouldn’t it be weird to qualify for a chance to represent your country at the World Championships, but not for your school at the NCAA Championship?

After coming so close to the standard but missing NCAA’s, we should expect to see several of those athletes trying to run one last championship meet by chasing the U.S. standard at meets like the Portland Track Festival.

Note 5/29: On the women's side, we already saw this happen as UC Davis coach Drew Wartenburg notes Aggies senior Sarah Sumpter finished 13th in Austin and already has the US A-standard.