The NCAA Division I indoor track and field championship will feature a bevy of district area athletes along with local high school grads.

The action starts Friday and wraps up Saturday at the Virginia Beach Sports Center in Virginia Beach, Va.

Pitt’s Je’Nyia Burton is the lone representative for the Panthers. Burton will compete in the 400, which starts with the preliminaries on Friday. If Burton advances, the finals would be on Saturday afternoon.

Burton was crowned the ACC champion in the event on March 3 and broke the school record for the first time back on Feb. 14 at the Clemson Tiger Paw with a time of 52.60 seconds. Her season best of 51.87 seconds came in the preliminary round at the ACC championships and then 51.82 one day later to claim the title.

West Virginia’s Ceili McCabe is the lone Mountaineer competitor. McCabe qualified for the women's 3,000-meter final race on Saturday, set to start at approximately 4 p.m.

In her last outing in the event, McCabe claimed first at the Big 12 track and field championship on March 1 with a time of 9:07.56. McCabe ranks 10th in the nation in the 3,000 meters after posting a personal and program record time of 8:45.97 in the event on Dec. 7 at the Boston University Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener in Boston.

Penn State will send the largest contingent. Hayley Kitching will compete in the 800-meter run, Florence Caron will compete in the 5,000 and Maddie Pitts will compete in the pentathlon. On the men’s side, Ajani Dwyer will run in the 60 and 200, and Jake Palermo will run in the 400. In the 800, the Nittany Lions will see Darius Smallwood, Yukichi Ishii and Olivier Desmeules all compete in the event.

Of the local grads, Hempfield grad Elizabeth Tapper will compete for Michigan in the shot put. Shady Side Academy grad Melissa Riggins will run for Georgetown in the mile and potentially as part of the distance medley relay. Moon grad Mia Cochran is listed as a distance medley relay alternate for Washington.

West Virginia headed to NCAA rifle championships

The no. 2-seeded West Virginia University rifle team looks to capture its nation-best 20th national championship this weekend as the Mountaineers get set to conclude their season at the NCAA rifle championships on Friday and Saturday.

This year's championships are being hosted by Kentucky in Lexington. Each day of action is set to begin at 8:45 a.m. ET with the call to line from inside the Historic Memorial Coliseum.

Friday opens with two smallbore relays, followed by the individual finals at 2:30 p.m. Saturday wraps up the competition with two air rifle relays, followed by individual finals at 2 p.m.

West Virginia last won an NCAA championship in 2017. 

WVU enters the 2024 NCAA championships with a team scoring average of 4742.6 in aggregate, a smallbore mark of 2355.8 and an air rifle average of 2386.7. All three averages are the second-best in the nation.

• Locally speaking, UTEP freshman and Penn-Trafford grad Carlee Valenta earned a spot at the meet for air rifle.

Valenta maintains a 594.429 average in air rifle. She set the UTEP school record with a 599 in the Miners' NCAA qualifier match against Alaska Fairbanks on Feb. 22. She has led the Miners in air rifle 12 times this season, including the past seven consecutive matches, and has scored 590 or higher in every match except her first, where she fired a 589.

First Published: March 14, 2025, 9:30 a.m.