Photo Per Sydnee Horstman
Most collegiate athletes have only four years of athletic eligibility. For Saint Ambrose Junior Josh Mottet, that means he’s got a little bit more than one full year left to compete and make it to the highest level. Mottet has already been to the National meet three times, and he’s looking to make it a few more.
However, with new seasons comes new rules, including rules that will make it harder for SAU Track and Field athletes to qualify for the National Championships. For the 2024-2025 season, standards to qualify have increased in difficulty, meaning less athletes will have marks sufficient enough to qualify, which means less athletes competing in Nationals in general.
What’s the point in changing qualifications throughout the years? Athlete’s already have it hard enough, why make it even harder? NAIA officials say it’s a way to truly root out the best of the best, and ensure those who are competing for the title of National Champion are truly the highest caliber athletes.
Officials also say this helps ensure venues can house the large number of athletes and changing standards keeps the level of higher competition to par with other leagues standards (NCAA and JUCO).
While this may sound perfect on paper, some say this in turn can have a negative impact on the athletes and coaches. Those who strive and dream of getting to compete for their school in a national championship. These changes have since made this dream much harder for the athletes to reach, when in previous years it wasn’t as hard.
The St. Ambrose Track and Field team has already experienced these struggles in the first year with the standard changes.
One of these athletes is junior year pole vaulter Josh Mottet. In his first two years with the program, he has qualified for the national competition in three seasons. However, with the current indoor season coming to a close rapidly, he’s running out of chances to qualify for his fourth time.
When asked about any struggles or thoughts regarding the new standard changes, Mottet predicts Nationals will be even more of a challenge this year.
“I haven’t really seen a difference yet but I’m sure Nationals will just be harder.” Mottet then discussed how even though he doesn’t feel that his level of competition at the moment is up to his standards and hasn’t felt as stressed out about the standards changes, he had this to say for others.
“I know that it’s being dealt with among a lot of our on track runners, for example our DMR (Distance Medley Relay) team broke the school record today, however that only got B standard in qualifying.”
B standard is the lower section of Nationals qualifying where a school can only send three B standard competitors, even if they have over 10 people who actually reach B standard. Athletes who would have had a guaranteed qualification last year in the A standard are now having to deal with B standard qualifications with the same mark or time that they had last year.
Take Mottet, who last year at the end of the outdoor season jumped 15’9 at one of the last meets of the season. This gave him A standard qualification and he was able to compete at the Outdoor Nationals.
This year for outdoor however, the same 15 ‘9 jump that would give Mottet a guaranteed entry into the national competition, is now the qualifying height for B standard.
But Mottet isn’t the only pole vaulter for the Fighting Bee’s who’s felt the effects. Junior Ryleigh Warden, who has made two appearances to the National Meets in previous years says, “I don’t think the change in standards has been directly affecting my performance, but I also don’t think too many people know how much the standards have really changed and the expectations for qualifying are still there.
“Going to Nationals and competing with 30 girls was really cool, but it was definitely a big field. I think the standards needed to go up, but I wasn’t expecting it to be by that much.”
Warden’s jump’s in the past season that have qualified her for Nationals were a jump of 11 ‘6.5 in the spring of 2023, and 11’ 4.5 in the spring of the 2024 season. Both of these jumps if completed with the new qualifications would still be short of B standard.
Coaches say they are also feeling the stress, with less A standards means possibly more B standards, which means coaches have tough decisions to make on who to send to Nationals and who has to stay home. SAU Track and Field Head Coach Tyler Mulder had this to say about the changes this season,
“It’s hard because there are certain cutoffs with the amount of people that can go, so it puts coaches in a hard spot if they have to pick and choose between their athletes.”
SAU’s Track and Field athletes are gearing up to prepare for the outdoor season on April 5th.
