William & Mary junior Emily Stites (Wyoming, Ohio) will make her run into history on Thursday night at the NCAA Championships finals, competing in the 10,000m run.  The national championship race will take place at the University of Oregon's Hayward Field, at 6:38 p.m. Pacific, 9:38 p.m. Eastern.

USTFCCCA National Championships Central
Live Results
ESPN3.com (coverage begins at 1 p.m. Eastern)
WTKR Channel 3 Preview

Follow Along
The NCAA Championships will be broadcast on the ESPN family of networks.  Live coverage of all field events begins at 1 p.m. Eastern on ESPN3.com, and the broadcast window on ESPNU runs from 7-8:30 p.m. Eastern before switching over to the main channel, ESPN, from 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m..  In the Williamsburg area, ESPNU is channel 232 (HD 1232) on Cox, and Channel 208 on Direct TV.  The main ESPN channel on Cox is channel 12 (HD 1212) and Channel 206 on Direct TV.  Live results (lap-by-lap) are available through Flashresults.com.

What's at Stake
All 24 runners who start the race on Thursday will earn All-America honors of some sort.  The top eight finishers, in addition to scoring points for their teams, will be named First-Team All-American, finishers 9-16 will be named Second-Team All-American, and the remaining competitors will be named Honorable Mention All-Americans.  This weekend also represents a chance for athletes to qualify for their respective national championships, and to various international competitions including the IAAF World Track and Field Championships this August in Beijing.  Stites is already qualified for the USAT&F Championships in the 10,000m, after setting the school record last year at 32:41.55, but will need a big lifetime-best and NCAA Championships record to reach the World Championships standard of 32 minutes flat.

Scouting the Tribe
Stites is the one of the most experienced athletes entered in the 10,000m on Thursday, as she is racing for her W&M program-record seventh All-American honor.  In her three years so far, Stites has appeared in the NCAA Finals eight times, the second-most of any athlete in the field, and her .889 appearance percentage (8 of 9) is by far the highest of all 24 athletes.  The junior also leads the field by appearing in her seventh-straight NCAA finals, dating back to the 2013 outdoor championships.

Stites reached the NCAA finals for the second year in a row in the 10,000m, after finishing 10th in 2014 with the fastest time ever recorded by a 10th-place finisher (33:12.74).  In 2015, she began her spring with a win at the Colonial Relays, running 34:03.43 to shatter both the meet record and the Zable Stadium record by more than a minute.  It was also the 11th-fastest time ever at W&M.  Two weeks later, she ran 15:53.83 in the 5,000m at Mt. SAC, the second-fastest time in school history behind her own record, before returning home for the CAA Championships at the beginning of May.

At CAAs, Stites won the 5,000m title in a meet-record 16:12.61 (12th-fastest all-time), and was third in the 1,500m for the second year in a row with a lifetime-best 4:28.55 to rank 10th all-time among Tribe athletes.  Next up was her first-ever ECAC Championships, where Stites won the 3,000m title in another lifetime-best, 9:11.02, which was the second-fastest time ever for W&M.  Finally came the NCAA Semifinals, where Stites ran in the lead pack the entire way and closed in the second-fastest final mile, 800m, and 400m to finish third overall in 33:47.27.  It was the second year in a row that Stites took third in the semifinal 10,000m, and her time was the eighth-fastest ever at W&M.  She now has four of the top eight performances ever, and all six of her career 10,000m races are among the 14 fastest in school history.

With her seventh All-American performance this week, Stites will move past former teammate Elaina Balouris '14 as the Tribe women's track and field all-time leader in All-America honors.  She will be tied for ninth all-time among W&M athletes in every sport, and tied for eighth all-time among Tribe women.  Stites' ranking improves to a tie for third, however, when ranking only individual All-America honors (no relays).  Earlier in 2014-15, Stites was 36th at the NCAA Cross Country Championships, and 11th in the 5,000m at the NCAA Indoor Championships.  She is just the sixth athlete in school history to earn All-American honors in three different seasons in the same academic year

W&M All-Time All-American Leaders
Rank	Athlete	Team(s)	Total	Individual	Relay
1	Jenny Tatnall '81	Women's Swimming and Diving	18	7	11
2	Laura Schwarz '82	Women's Swimming and Diving	17	6	11
3	Matt Lane '01	Men's Cross Country & Track and Field	11	11	0
T4	Maureen Redmond '81	Women's Swimming and Diving	10	0	10
T4	Peggy Lawlor '75	Women's Swimming and Diving	10	6	4
T6	Erin Sheehey '84	Women's Swimming and Diving	9	6	3
T6	Kathe Kelley '79	Women's Swimming and Diving	9	6	3
8	Lori Pepple '86	Women's Gymnastics	8	8	0
T9	Emily Stites '16	Women's Cross Country & Track and Field	7	7	0
T9	Paul Vandegrift '92	Men's Cross Country & Track and Field	7	6	1
T9	Lora Jean Masters '83	Women's Swimming and Diving	7	0	7

10,000m Run National Final, One Heat, Thursday at 6:38 PM Pacific, 9:38 PM Eastern
World Record - 29:31.78, Juxia Wang, China (9/8/93)
2015 World Leader - 31:08.16, Gelete Burka, Ethiopia (4/3/15)
IAAF World Championships Qualifier - 32:00.00
American Record - 30:22.22, Shalane Flanagan, Nike (8/15/08)
2015 American Leader - 31:09.02, Shalane Flanagan, Nike (4/3/15)
USAT&F Championships Qualifier - 32:58.00
Collegiate Record - 31:18.07, Lisa Uhl, Iowa State (3/26/10)
NCAA Championships Record - 32:28.57, Sylvia Mosqueda, Cal State-Los Angeles (6/1/88)
2015 Collegiate Leader - 31:38.03, Emily Sisson, Providence (5/2/15)
2014 NCAA Champion - 32:32.35, Emma Bates, Boise State
2014 NCAA Eighth Place - 33:02.02, Jana Soethout, San Francisco
2014 NCAA 16th Place - 33:33.30, Olivia Mickle, Texas
Hayward Field Record - 30:24.39, Tirunesh Dibaba, Ethiopia (6/1/12)
School Record - 32:41.55, Emily Stites (4/17/14)
Athlete	Notes
Emily Stites (Jr.)	Ran 33:47 at the NCAA Semifinals, 6x All-American, CAA Champion at 5,000m, ECAC Champion at 3,000m outdoors, 10th in the NCAA 10,000m in 2014, 3rd in the NCAA East 10,000m each of the last two years