Linkl falls short, Wilson advances in NCAA track qualifying

Carson City hammer thrower Robert Linkl came up just short in his bid to qualify for the NCAA Track and Field Championships on Friday.

Linkl, a junior at Sacramento State, finished eighth at the NCAA West Regional at Stanford, three spots shy of earning an automatic berth to the national championship meet.

The NCAA Championships will be held June 11-14 at Sacramento State.

Linkl, a 1999 Whittell High graduate who now lists Carson City as his home, threw 191 feet, 11 inches to finish eighth in the competition at Cobb Track and Angell Field. The throw was 10 feet off Linkl's season best, significant because he only missed the top-five cutoff by four feet. Only two throwers surpassed 200 feet, with Stanford's Nick Welihozkiy emerging as the winner with a throw of 212-0.

Aarik Wilson, a product of Fallon and now a sophomore at Indiana, did succeed in earning a ticket to the NCAA finals when he placed fifth in the long jump during the NCAA Mideast Regional at Ohio State's Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium. Wilson logged a mark of 25-5-1/2.

Wilson is also bidding to qualify in the triple jump, an event which he placed second at last year's NCAA outdoor national championships and second at the national indoor finals earlier this year. He won both the long and triple jump at the recent Big Ten Championships.

Wilson is the grandson of Carson City's Grant and Nisha Kremers.

Another northern Nevada highlight on Friday came when Becky Holliday set an NCAA record in the women's pole vault during the West Regional finals. Holliday, a Reed High graduate and now a senior at Oregon, won the competition with a clearance of 14-8. The previous record was 14-7 1/4 set by UCLA's Tracy O'Hara of UCLA in 2000.