Weekly Release

This Week
The UNO track & field team will begin its outdoor season this weekend when it travels to the Tulsa Duals at the University of Tulsa.  The Mavericks will compete on Saturday, March 17 with the first event set for 9 a.m.  UNO has not competed since the end of the indoor season on Feb. 17.

The Coaches
Steve Smith is in his sixth season as the head coach of the University of Nebraska Omaha track program.  He served as an assistant for one year prior to taking the head coach's position.  Smith was named the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Indoor Coach of the Year in 2009 after guiding the Mavericks to a stunning win in the MIAA Indoor Championships.  He earned the award the next winter, guiding the Mavs to a repeat as MIAA Indoor Champs.   Overall, Smith has guided the Mavericks to three conference championships and three top-five finishes at the NCAA Division II Championship including a fourth-place finish indoors in 2010. Smith is assisted by Chris Richardson (jumps and pentathalon/heptathalon), who was named  the USTFCCCA South Central Regional Assistant Coach of the Year in 2011.  Marc Bierbaum coaches the distance events, and Rich Emsick handles the throws.

The Indoor Season
The Mavericks set a new school record and a host of personal bests during their first official season of Division I competition.

Junior Amanda Vorthman set a new school record in the 3,000 meters when she ran a time of 9:50.04 at the Nebraska Tune-Up on Feb. 17.  The time was more than 10 seconds faster than the previous school record set by Tara Biltoft in 1997.  It was also her fourth personal best of the year in the event.

Vorthmann also had UNO's top times and personal bests in the mile (5:03.78), 800 meters (2:20.85), 1,000 meters (2:59.95) and the 5,000 meters (18:30.80).

Multi-eventer Sami Spenner set a personal best in the pentathlon and in the process posted the third-best score in the event in school history.  She had a score of 3,810 at the Jack Jennett Invitational at Northern Iowa on Jan. 27, just 113 points behind UNO's second-best score set by Shannon Moore in 2010.

Spenner had a strong indoor season, leading the Mavericks and setting personal bests in the 60 meters (7.90), the long jump (19-03 1/2) and the triple jump (40-08 1/4).

NCAA Championship
As UNO begins its transition to Division I, the Mavericks are unable to compete in the NCAA Championships this season.  Therefore, they are not included in the national qualifier list during the indoor season.  However if UNO's marks were included, Spenner's personal best pentathlon score of 3,810 earned at the Jack Jennett Invitational at Northern Iowa on Jan. 27 ranked 40th in the nation.

All-Academic Team
Last season, the UNO track & field team earned an All-Academic Team  honor. Overall the athletes acquired a GPA of 3.19 and had 12 student-athletes on the Dean's List for the fall semester and 10 at the end of the spring semester. To earn all-academic honors, the team must accumulate a GPA of at least 3.00. Eight Mavericks also were named USTFCCCA All-Academic honorees for the 2010-11 academic year. The athletes who made the list were: Jody-Ann Coore, Kayla Koepke, Lianne McNaughton, Maja Mihalinec, Heather Minssen, Anja Puc, Celeste Robinson and Sami Spenner.     

Up Next For the Mavericks
The Mavericks will head farther south next weekend to take part in the Bobby Lane Invitational hosted by Texas-Arlington on Saturday, March 24.