Cal Track & Field Sending 4 Athletes to NCAA Nationals

Two-sport man Trevor Rogers will lead a contingent of four Cal track and field athletes to the NCAA outdoor championships after becoming the first male Golden Bears’ long jumper to reach the national meet since 2015.

Rogers, who plays wide receiver on the Cal football team, leaped a career-best 25 feet, 5 1/2 inches (7.76 meters) to place eighth in a field of 47 at the NCAA West Regionals at Fayetteville, Ark., this week.

The top 12 finishers in each event at the regionals earned berths at the NCAA championships, June 10-13 at Eugene, Ore.

Rogers’ leap boosted him to No. 7 on Cal’s career chart in the event. A sophomore from Acalanes High School in the East Bay, Rogers’ previous best was 25-1 3/4, which he delivered a year ago to finish second at the ACC championship.

"I'm so impressed with this kid,” Bears head coach Robyne Johnson, who also serves as jumps coach, told Cal’s athletic website. "For him to step up at this level is huge, especially with him doing double duty with football.

“He was so focused on making it to Nationals and really excelled today – I'm so proud of him for stepping up and performing. He's so competitive, and that's the beautiful thing about him."

Other Cal athletes headed to Eugene are Valentina Savva in the women’s hammer throw, Ali Sahaida in the women’s pole vault and Seth Johnson in the decathlon.

Savva, the latest in a recent tradition of elite women’s hammer throwers at Cal, delivered the two longest qualifying marks of the competition.

She thew 227-0 (69.18m) on her second attempt, which was more than four feet farther than anyone else managed. Savva will arrive at the nationals seeded No. 5 in the field, with Minnesota’s Anthonett Nabwe an overwhelming favorite with her best of 254-9 (77.64).

A sophomore from Cyprus, who was 10th at the NCAA nationals a year ago, Savva has a best of 230-4.

Cal throws coach Tyler Burdorff said Savva’s training has been more consistent this season and he sees good things ahead.

“She's getting close to a much bigger throw at the right time, and we're excited for the next two weeks,” he said.

Sahaida cleared 14-6 1/4 (4.43m) on her first attempt to finish in the seventh spot at the qualifying meet. She had a scary lead-up to that when she needed all three attempts to clear the previous height of 14-2 1/2 (4.33m). A senior from El Dorado Hills, Calif., Sahaida has an outdoor best of 14-11, which ranks her No. 7 in the country this season.

"Ali stepped up with some clutch jumps right when she needed them the most," Cal pole vault coach Dan Lefever said. "Such a fighter. She was determined to get through.”

Johnson, a redshirt junior from San Bernardino and already a post-graduate student, posted a career-best score of 7786 at the Mt. SAC Relays to secure a spot in the NCAA meet.

His mark in the two-day, 10-event competition ranks sixth on Cal’s all-time list and is tied for the 10th-best among entries to the NCAA meet.

Two Bears suffered near-misses in their bids to reach the NCAA meet.

Nik Iwankiw a redshirt junior from South Pasadena threw a personal-best of 61-3 1/2 (18.68) in the shot put to miss advancing by one centimeter.

And Inara Ukawuba, a sophomore from Naperville, Ill., ran 13.07 in the 100 hurdles — the third-fastest time in Cal history. But she finished 14th — two spots behind the final qualifier by the narrowest margin of 0.005 seconds.

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