UW-L Leads After First Day of NCAA III Championships; Schetter Wins National Title in Long Jump

For Immediate Release: Friday, March 13, 2009

Terre Haute, Ind. – The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse women’s track and field team leads after the first day of competition at the 2009 NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The Eagles have 26.5 team points while UW-Oshkosh is second with 19.0. North Central College and Hardin-Simmons University are tied for third with 15.0 points while Westfield State, Tufts University, Moravian Colege and SUNY-Fredonia are tied for fifth with 10.0 points.

UW-L's Caitlin Schetter captured her consecutive indoor national title in the long jump Friday (18-10). She becomes the second athlete in NCAA Division III history to win back-to-back national indoor long jump titles, joining Tara (Harding) Jaeger from UW-Oshkosh in 1995 and 1996. Schetter, Jaeger and Sandy Shelton (Christopher Newport University, Va.) are the only multiple-winners in the long jump. Shelton won in 1988 and 1991.

Schetter now has four career indoor All-America honors. Along with winning the long jump in 2008, she was seventh in the long jump and fifth in the triple jump in 2007.

Schetter also qualified for Saturday's 55-meter dash final after running in Friday's preliminaries (7.14).

The Eagles' Katie Fondow placed second in the long jump (18-9 1/4) Friday while Ashton May was sixth (17-10 1/4). Fondow now has four career All-America awards in the indoor long jump, placing second in 2006 and third in 2007 and 2008. May earned her first career indoor All-America recognition in the long jump.

UW-L had three competitors in the pole vault Friday with Alecia Ellingstad leading the way with a fourth-place finish (12-8). It is her first career All-America award. The Eagles' Jamie Scott was 12th (11-6 1/4) while Katlin Genthe tied for 13th (11-6 1/4).

Scott earned All-America honors in the pentathlon Friday after tying for eighth-place (3,195 points).

Danica Schaefer failed to qualify for Saturday's 400-meter dash final after running 59.37 in Friday's preliminaries.

Action concludes Saturday in Terre Haute.

For updated results, click here.

For live video streaming, click here.