NCAA Division II Championships page / Complete Results

ESU Track & Field All-Americans - Women / Men

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Senior Lynn Mayer was the runner-up in the women's high jump and senior Negus Graham finished fifth in the men's 400m dash to give East Stroudsburg University two All-Americans at the 2011 NCAA Division II Indoor Track & Field Championships, which concluded on Saturday at the Albuquerque Convention Center.

Mayer is the first five-time All-American in track and field in school history after finishing in the top three for the third straight NCAA championship, and Graham earned his third straight All-America honor in the 400. Senior Trina Carito placed 12th in the women's pentathlon in her third trip to the NCAA Championships.

Mayer was clean through her first five jumps, including her top effort of 5-8 1/2, and was tied for first going into 5-9 3/4 but was unable to clear the height on three attempts which would have set the school record.

Freshman Barbara Szabo of Western State (Colo.) cleared 5-9 3/4 on her final jump to win the national title. If she was unsuccessful, Szabo and Mayer would have gone back down to 5-8 1/2 to begin a jump-off for the national championship. Mayer entered the meet with the fifth-best mark in Division II at 5-9 1/4.

Mayer tied for second at last year's indoor championship, also at 5-8 1/2, and tied for third outdoors for her third and fourth All-America honors. She was also an All-American both indoors and outdoors as a freshman in 2008 and broke a tie with her coach, Karen (Way) Gaita, for the most All-America certificates by an ESU track and field athlete.

Graham ran a time of 47.43, six-hundredths of a second off his school record at last year's NCAA Championships on the same track, to become one of six three-time All-Americans for the men's track and field program. He placed fourth in the nation indoors and eighth outdoors last season.

He was seeded fifth going into the final with a time of 47.56 in the prelims after ranking 10th on the national performance list at 48.05 entering the NCAA Championships. Leford Green of Johnson C. Smith won the title with a time of 46.38. Green, Graham and third-place finisher Antonio Abney of St. Augustine's are the only men to earn All-America status at the last three NCAA meets.

Graham, Rob Stone (long jump), Jim Lauck (steeplechase), Paul Ferency (shot put), Pete Heesen (steeplechase) and Lenny Jenkins (triple jump) are the only other three-time All-Americans in men's track and field at ESU. He can become the Warriors' only four-time All-American during the outdoor season.

Carito finished her career with a strong performance in the pentathlon, including a career-best 2:25.66 in the 800m run in the final event. A three-time NCAA participant and three-time PSAC champion during her career at ESU, Carito was competing for the Warriors for the last time, using a medical redshirt to replace her 2009 indoor season that was lost due to injury.

The senior, who battled injuries over the last month of the season and was unable to defend her PSAC championship in the pentathlon in late February, opened with a time of 9.60 in the 60m hurdles that was just three-hundredths off her personal best. She had marks of 5-3 1/4 in the high jump, 29-2 in the shot put and 16-11 1/4 in the long jump before finishing with the 800m run.

Carito's score of 3,344 points was seven points better than her total of 3,337 that was good for 10th last year. She entered with the ninth-best score in Division II – 3,519 points – that is second-best in school history. She also has 13 total entries on ESU's all-time top 10 lists, seven indoors and six outdoors, and was a 24-time PSAC placewinner.

The outdoor track and field season begins next weekend at the UNC Charlotte 49ers Classic and the Lynchburg Invitational in Virginia. ESU's men were third and the women were fifth at the PSAC Indoor Championships and the men were second and the women placed fourth outdoors last season.