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McCook's Aaron Plas named captain for Husker track team
LINCOLN -- Head coach Gary Pepin has announced the names of eight athletes who will serve as captains for the Nebraska men's and women's track and field teams during the 2005-06 season.
Four men and four women were selected in a vote by their teammates to serve as leaders throughout the upcoming campaign.
The women's group of captains features four seniors, three of whom are former NCAA champions.
Becky Breisch (Edwardsburg, Mich.), Priscilla Lopes (Whitby, Ontario) and Ashley Selig (Lincoln) each will look to reclaim individual national titles while pushing the Husker women to their first team title since the 1984 season.
Breisch (discus) and Lopes (60m hurdles) both earned titles in 2004, while Selig (pentathlon) claimed her first NCAA championship last season.
The fourth women's captain, Sara Jane Baker (Kalamazoo, Mich.), is a four-time NCAA Championships qualifier and three-time Big 12 runner up.
Representing the Nebraska men's squad will be a trio of NCAA All-Americans -- Aaron Plas (McCook), Nate Probasco (Scribner) and Ray Scotten (Indianapolis, Ind.) -- as well as a former Big 12 champion Issar Yazhbin (Yavne, Israel).
The group is comprised of two seniors who earned a pair of 2005 NCAA top-10 finishes in Plas (high jump) and Scotten (pole vault).
The two remaining junior captains each have formerly claimed respective Big 12 titles in the sprint events (Probasco, 200m, 4x100m relay) and hammer throw (Yazhbin).
"We feel that this is probably the best possible group to serve as captains for next season," Pepin said. "All are very respected as Nebraska student-athletes."
Uljas approaches NU 800 record -- Two Nebraska track and field athletes were featured among the world's finest athletes Tuesday at the Athletissima 2005 IAAF Super Grand Prix meet.
Egle Uljas and Dmitrijs Milkevics each posted outstanding times to claim high placings in their respective women's and men's 800-meter races.
Uljas, who is entering her sophomore season at NU, approached Sharon Powell's 1988 Husker women's record of 2:01.26 when she finished fifth in Race 2 with a personal-best time of 2:02.92.
The Tallinn, Estonia, native, who competed in the 400 meters at the 2004 Olympics, has been running the 800 for only a few months and most recently reached the event finals at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Uljas must reach the "A" standard time of 2:00.00 in order to qualify for the women's competition at next month's World Championships in Helsinki, Finland.
Milkevics, who will be a junior during the 2005-06 season, earned third place in Race 1 of the men's 800 meters with a time of 1:45.84.
The 2005 NCAA outdoor champion is in the process of preparing for the World Championships where he will compete for Latvia.
He reached the "A" standard qualification with his school-record performance of 1:44.74 at last month's NCAA outdoor meet.