Lauren Gale, Lexie Keller place at NCAA track championships

Collegian | Garrett Mogel

Lauren Gale holds up a jacket from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics Team Canada 4×400-meter relay track team on the Jack Christiansen Memorial Track in Fort Collins, Colorado, Oct. 4, 2021.

Ruby Kayser

Braidon Nourse, Sports Reporter
March 20, 2022

The 2021-22 Division I indoor track and field season ended Saturday, March 12 after two days of intense competition in the 2022 NCAA DI Indoor Track & Field Championships at the Birmingham CrossPlex. Both individual and team champions have been crowned. The University of Florida took the women’s championship with a total of 68 points, while the University of Texas won the men’s competition with 47 total points.

The Rams of Colorado State University did not have any men’s entries, but two star women made the cut to compete for glory on the track. Senior Lexie Keller, a multi-event competitor, was entered in the pentathlon event and finished third.

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The other Rams entry was senior Lauren Gale, who two weeks prior had set a MW Conference championship meet record in the 400-meter dash by over a second. Her time was 51.64 seconds.

Keller started strong in the pentathlon when she took sixth overall in a 16-athlete field in the 60-meter hurdles, securing 1,039 points to start her campaign. She only got better with a first-place finish in shot put and a third-place finish in long jump. Overall, she finished on the podium, taking third place in the pentathlon with a total score of 4,321, a new personal best for Keller.

Gale started her title search in the 400-meter preliminary race, qualifying with a time of 52.17 seconds. This time was the seventh-best qualifying mark going into the final. Gale improved on her time in the finals, beating her Mountain West Conference championship time with 51.64 seconds. Despite her improvement from preliminaries to finals, the rest of the field improved as well. Gale took eighth place to cap off her legendary collegiate indoor career at CSU.

 

Notably, both Gale and Keller earned U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association First Team All-America honors for their performances in the 2022 NCAA DI Indoor Track & Field Championships.

Look forward to what the Rams will bring to outdoor track and field, as the Rams will start their outdoor campaign March 25 at the Spank Blasing Invite at Colorado State University Pueblo.

Reach Braidon Nourse at sports@collegian.com or on Twitter @BraidonNourse.