Due to a gloomy winter weather forecast for the Chadron area this weekend, the Chadron State College softball games, originally scheduled for CSC Softball Field on March 5-6, will be moved to Pueblo, Colorado, and they will be played instead on Friday, March 4 and Saturday, March 5, within the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference by-laws.

The games will be played in doubleheader format, beginning at noon on Friday and 11 a.m. on Saturday. Forecasts for Pueblo on those two days are mostly sunny with 60-70 degree temperatures.

Tickets are available in advance at GoThunderwolvesTickets.UniversityTickets.com.

CSU-Pueblo (6-1, 3-1 RMAC) took its first loss of the season last weekend at home, while winning a series against Colorado School of Mines in Pueblo. The ThunderWolves’ other wins were a three-game sweep at Western New Mexico.

In seven games, the ThunderWolves are batting .370 as a team, which is the second-best team batting average in the conference. Their team ERA of 3.21 is No. 3.

Leading pitcher Taylor Strupp, a senior, has the third-best ERA in the league at 1.47. Sophomore utility pitcher Katelynn Ralston is batting .529, while freshman outfielder Ashley Tosh bats .500.

Despite their 1-3 start, six Eagles are batting over .300, led by freshman left fielder Aliyah Rothstein at .403. Sophomore utility player Mackenzi Kroll had a breakout game on Sunday with three home runs, and she is slugging over .800. In addition, J’lyssa Martinez and Addison Spears lead the Eagles with seven RBI apiece.

Senior pitcher Gabby Russell lead the CSC bullpen with a 4.76 ERA and 22 strikeouts in 32 and one-third innings. Freshman Kenzi Garner, who earned the Eagles’ first pitching win of the season, has a 5.25 ERA.

With the relocation of this weekend’s games to Pueblo, the CSC home opener will be pushed back by one week. Colorado Christian is due for a visit to Chadron on March 12.

Peters & Powers Selected As RMAC Honorable Mentions

Senior guard Jori Peters and freshman forward Ashayla Powers of the Chadron State College women’s basketball team were named to the 2021-22 RMAC Honorable Mention list, which was announced by the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Tuesday afternoon.

Peters, from Mitchell, Neb., was the team’s anchor in 2021. She spent 821 minutes on the court this season, averaging 31.6 minutes per game. She finished the season with a 1.27 assist to turnover ratio and team-highs of 79 assists and 29 steals.

The four-year starter leaves behind a legacy of unmatched endurance and superior ball-handling skills. She remains the holder of the highest free throw percentage in a season in program history (90.2% in 2019-20).

Powers, from Longmont, Colo., had a breakout season in 2021. Ranking eighth in the RMAC with 347 points at 13.9 points per game, she helped lead the Eagles to their best conference record in five years. She also led the team with 43.8% field goals made, 118 free throws made, and 75.2% free throws made, as well as 48 offensive rebounds and 103 defensive rebounds for 151 total boards.

Powers also landed a buzzer-beater to give the Eagles a thrilling 63-61 win over Adams State back in February.

Daniella Turner of Colorado Mesa was named the 2021-22 RMAC Player of the Year. Defensive Player of the Year was awarded to Ashley Steffeck of Colorado School of Mines and Freshman of the Year was given to Haylee Weathersby of Black Hills State. Colorado School of Mines’ Brittany Simpson is the RMAC Coach of the Year.

Four Selected To NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships

Four Chadron State College track and field student-athletes were selected on Tuesday to the 270-person men’s and women’s fields at the 2022 NCAA Division II Indoor Track and Field Championships, to be held March 11-12 in Pittsburg, Kansas.

Three men’s athletes and one women’s will make the trip. Three are freshmen, and one a sophomore.

The highest nationally-ranked among them is freshman Daniel Reynolds of Granby, Colorado. Reynolds recorded his first provisional mark of the season in December at the Yellow Jacket Holiday Open, when he threw the 35-pound weight 18.40 meters. He improved upon that throw further at the Mines Classic and the BHSU Stinger Open in February, where he set a CSC school record of 18.93 meters. It wasn’t until the RMAC Indoor Championships, however, that he made it into the NCAA field, shattering the RMAC meet record and his own school record by hitting 19.80 meters to win gold. That most recent throw, on February 25, has him ranked No. 11 among the entries at the NCAA meet.

Leading the field in the men’s weight throw are the returning third and fourth place finishers from 2021. Both are seniors with throws this season over 21 meters. Tanner Berg of Northern State commands the pack with a mark of 22.58 meters, and Brent Fairbanks of Ashland will try to catch him after hitting 21.97 meters at his conference meet last weekend.

Freshman Morgan Fawver, of McCook, Nebraska, made only eight successful long jump attempts this season, but fortunately, his second-to-last landed him No. 13 on the national charts. He landed a jump of 7.43 meters at the Mines meet in February, going more than a foot past his previous indoor best of 7.05 meters at the 2021 RMAC championships. Fawver did not compete at this year’s RMAC meet, in order to preserve his health for nationals. He also ran a 60 meter race, at CSC’s home meet, which equated to 6.86 seconds after altitude adjustments, and it was just 0.09 seconds from making the NCAA field in that event.

The men’s long jump field returns defending national champ David Kizan, who qualified only a centimeter ahead of Fawver. It also includes last year’s placers three through five, led by Christopher Goodwin of Central Missouri with a mark of 7.67 meters. The field is relatively wide open, as only about 10 inches separate the top marks of all 16 competitors.

In the men’s triple jump, sophomore Derrick Nwagwu, of Aurora, Colorado, quietly improved on his career best indoors, at the RMAC championships, moving ahead two centimeters to take third at the event. He previously jumped 15.02 meters at the CSC home meet, which effectively placed him in the triple jump field in January. Still, he is more than a foot past where he landed at last year’s RMAC indoor meet, and he went on to a mark of 15.1 meters in the 2021 outdoor season. Nwagwu enters the NCAA competition ranked No. 16 in his field.

The competition is stiff in the men’s triple. All three medal-winners from last year are back in the 2022 field, and five of the top seven jumpers from 2021 will also compete. RMAC rival Dakota Abbott of UCCS is chief among them, bringing the 2021 NCAA triple jump crown to Pittsburg. The leader in the 2022 season is the only Division II athlete to go past 16 meters, ranking Henry Kiner of host Pittsburg State the favorite at 16.02 meters.

The only member of CSC’s women’s team to travel to Kansas for NCAAs is Jourdaine Cerenil of Pine Bluffs, Wyoming. The freshman high jumper competed at six of CSC’s eight meets this season, finishing no lower than her bronze medal at the RMAC Championships. Cerenil set her top mark at the Mines Winter Classic, where she went over 1.72 meters on her second attempt. That leap now ranks her No. 15. She has added at least five centimeters of clearance to her jumps since December, when she missed on three consecutive tries of 1.67 meters. Cerenil also has the experience of attempting 1.75 meters six times.

At the 2021 NCAA championships, 1.71 meters was good enough for fourth place in women’s high jump. However the top four from that meet are back in 2022, and three of the four hit 1.74 meters or better at last year’s event. Junior Chinenye Agina of Azusa Pacific is the only woman to have cleared six feet this season, but she has not competed at an NCAA indoor meet in three years.

The four national qualifiers represent the biggest CSC contingent since seven went in 2016. Cerenil is the first to qualify from the women’s team since Ashton Hallsted in 2019.

Ashland University is the defending NCAA indoor champ for the men’s side, while Grand Valley State holds the women’s title.