GENEVA, Ohio – Senior
Stephen Peper and junior
Lucas Kramarczuk of the St. Olaf College men's track and field team officially qualified for the 2022 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships when the selections for the national meet were announced on Friday.
Peper qualified for the third national meet of his standout career, earning a spot in both the high jump and decathlon, while Kramarczuk did so for the first time and will compete in the 110-meter hurdles. The 2022 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships will be held Thursday through Saturday, May 26-28 at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
Peper enters the national meet with the joint third-highest clearance in the high jump this season after clearing 2.08 meters to claim his second-straight Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) title in the event on May 14. The senior earned All-America honors in the event at the 2021 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships by finishing fourth and placed 11th indoors this season.
In addition to competing in the high jump, Peper will be in action in the decathlon for the first time at a national meet and carries the seventh-highest score in the country (6,623) into the meet. That score earned the senior second in the decathlon at the MIAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships earlier this month and is the highest score in program history. Peper is St. Olaf's second national qualifier in the decathlon in the last three national outdoor meets along with Eli Knutson '19 in 2019.
Kramarczuk earned his spot in the national meet at Thursday's UW-La Crosse Final Qualifier after clocking in with a school-record time of 14.41 seconds and is the No. 15 seed in the event. The junior is believed to be the fifth Ole to be a national qualifier in the event and the first since Mike Mercer '92 in 1992.
The decathlon gets under way on Thursday, May 26 at 11:30 a.m. EDT and day two gets going on Friday, May 27 at 10 a.m. EDT. The prelims of the 110-meter hurdles are scheduled for 2:30 p.m. EDT on Friday afternoon, with the finals being contested on Saturday, May 28 at 1 p.m. EDT.
