The William & Mary men's track & field team will send at least two athletes to the NCAA Championships finals site in Austin, Texas, after two outstanding events Friday at the Eastern Preliminaries.  This will be the first year since 2009 that the Tribe has sent multiple athletes to the finals site, and the 15th overall.

- First up was the discus, where sophomore KJ Cook (Buena Vista, Va.) shot up the leaderboard and qualified for his first national finals.  Cook was seeded 28th coming into the week, and opened his three attempts with a small personal-best of 54.51m (178-10).  His second throw was a massive improvement of more than 2.25 meters over his season-best, going 56.73m (186-1), and his third throw was over 55m as well.  That placed him third after the second flight, and after a tense third flight, Cook finished 12th overall to advance to the NCAA finals in two weeks time.  His best throw of 56.73m is the second-longest single throw ever at W&M.  Cook is the first man in school history to ever advance to the national finals in the discus, and the first thrower to advance to the finals outdoors in something other than the javelin.

- Also in the discus, grad student Preston Richardson (Franktown, Va.) finished 30th overall, just one spot behind his pre-meet seeding, and threw 53.01m (173-11), the 11th-longest throw in school history.  Freshman Troy Yearwood (Chesapeake, Va.) finished 36th overall, five spots better than seeded, and threw 50.93m (167-1).  Yearwood, who was third in the CAA Championships in both the discus and the hammer this season, still has at least one more competition on his schedule when he competes at the USAT&F U20 Championships in the discus in late June, aiming for a spot on Team USA at the Pan-Am U20 Championships later this summer in Costa Rica.

- Finishing out the night were the quarterfinals of the 800m run, where sophomore Miles Owens (Yorktown, Va.) came in seeded 11th.  Running in the second of three heats, Owens went through the bell in fifth place and just 0.3 off the lead, and once used a strong kick around the final 200m to win a sprint for third place and an automatic qualifying spot in 1:49.84.  He is the first man from W&M to make the NCAA Semifinals in the 800m since Anders Christiansen '99 in 1999.

William & Mary has two more events on tap on Saturday, the final day of the NCAA Eastern Preliminaries.  At 2:45 PM, Richardson and Cook will compete in the semifinals of the shot put, and at 6:45 PM, senior Ryan McGorty (Fairfax, Va.) will race the quarterfinals of the 1,500m run.