Army West Point Athletics
Army West Point
NCAA East Regional Prelims
Davis, Fink Punch Ticket to NCAA Championships at East Regional Preliminaries
May 31, 2025 | Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Army Track and Field competed in the NCAA Outdoor East First Round Regional Meet, with two athletes, Emily Fink and Nathan Davis, punching their ticket to compete in the NCAA Outdoor Championship in Eugene, Oregon.
Emily Fink led the way securing fourth place in the hammer throw with a mark of 66.46 meters (218-0), qualifying her for the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon for the second straight year.
Nathan Davis joins Emily Fink in competing on the national stage in two weeks, qualifying for the national championship meet in the 3000m steeplechase.
The junior, competing in the 3000m steeplechase at the regional meet for the second straight year, clinched his spot in Eugene finishing ninth in the event with a final time of 8:38.72. The mark not only was a personal best for Davis but also set a program record.
As for the rest of the athletes, 11 additional Black Knights competed in the East Regional Meet.
Mikayla Cheney advanced to the quarterfinal round of the 1500m run, finishing in the first round with a 4:16.77 final time. Cheney went on to finish 23rd overall, finishing with a time of 4:20.37 in the quarterfinal round.
Charlotte Richman also competed in the 1500m in the first round, finishing with a final mark of 4:24.90 and 41st in the first round.
Louisa Diamond also made her appearance at the regional meet in the 10,000m run, clocking a final time of 34:08.10 to finish 24th in the field.
Sophia Dykstra made her regional meet appearance in the women's discus, finishing in 41st place with a final mark of 45.46m (149-2).
Rounding out the women, Joanna Halfhill put on a solid performance in the women's 3000m steeplechase, finishing in 44th overall in the region with a final time of 10:47.71.
On the men's side, Robby Manse demonstrated versatility with a 25th-place finish in the hammer throw (62.28 meters, 204-4) and 32nd place in the shot put (17.69 meters, 58-½).
Teammates Elijah Goodwin and Collin Torres placed 45th and 48th in the javelin with 56.96m and 53.42m marks respectively.
In the pole vault, Brian McSweeney cleared 5.03 meters (16-6) to earn 37th place, and Kasen Jeitz represented Army in the 800 meters, finishing 44th with a time of 1:51.81.
Javan Guevara-Cragwell rounded out the Black Knight athletes that competed at the regional meet, competing in the triple jump. Guevara-Cragwell finished the event in 37th place with a 14.74m final mark.
Emily Fink and Nathan Davis will head to Eugene, Oregon to compete in the NCAA Outdoor Championships on June 11 through June 14.
Hear From Coach Smith:
The NCAA track and field championships kicked off this week with two regional meets from which 24 individuals (12 from the East and 12 from the West) will qualify to compete in Eugene, Oregon at the NCAA championships June 11-14. Each of these regional meets is the best meet in the world in 2025 until we get to Eugene….then that will reign supreme as the best meet on the planet. We qualified 14 (7 men and 7 women) to the East prelims here in Jacksonville. It is a big number for our program and represents the quality of the athletes in our program. Yesterday, we suffered through some long lightning delays and eventually got everything completed. Robby Manse '26 competed in the hammer and threw very close to his personal best. He followed that up with a respectable showing in the shot put today. He has had a breakthrough season and a dominated the Patriot League indoors and out. He finishes this year with some outstanding improvements and a clear understanding of what he needs to do to get to the next level. Our two javelin guys threw yesterday as well. Collin Torres '28 and Elijah Goodwin '27 are both young and will be here again. They learned that you can't will yourself to success at this level and that you have to stay true to your technique to match the level of performance needed to qualify for this meet. They are two talented and disciplined young men so the future is bright for us in that event. Brian McSweeney '25 was the first Second Lieutenant from our team to compete this weekend. He warmed up yesterday and then the storms hit and shut us down. He got going this morning and cleared the opening height but couldn't get to the next bar. He ends his college career with numerous accolades including a good run at the school record, multiple star meet victories and multiple Patriot League titles. He was a star for us and we will miss him. Kasen Jeitz '26 closed out a great year of significant improvements and multiple Star Meet wins with a strong performance here. The lightning delay pushed the 800m to close to midnight. Kasen got out well in the race and was where he needed to be with 200 meters remaining but could not muster the kick that usually propels him to the front of races. He finishes the year ranked number 2 on the Army all-time list in the 800 indoors and outdoors. Today was day 1 of the women's meet and was kicked off for the Army team by the women's hammer throw early this morning. Emily Fink '25 came into the week ranked as the number 1 hammer thrower in the NCAA. She punched her ticket to Eugene today on her 2nd throw of the competition when she launched the hammer 66.46 meters (218'). It was a mark that she has achieved or eclipsed numerous times this year. I say that not to minimize the mark or the accomplishment but rather to emphasize that today was merely about qualifying for Eugene. She only got three attempts and all she had to do was finish in the top 12. She finished fourth today and moves on to Eugene where she will be tested against some of the best people in the world. Multiple Olympians will be represented in the field of hammer throwers. It will be a great competition, and Fink will be part of the reason it is great. She will go in with the No. 1 throw in the entire NCAA. She will be challenged to make the final and be challenged to score in the top eight. The last time the Army women scored any team points at the NCAA meet was in 1990 when Diana Wills finished third in the triple jump. With her qualification today, Emily becomes only the third Army woman to ever qualify for the NCAA D1 championship more than once (Wills 1988, 1990; Lawson 1997, 1998) and only the sixth woman to ever qualify for the meet (Wills, Laswon, Sobiesk 1988, Wren 1998, Mikoud 2022). Also competing today for our team were Charlotte Richman '26 and Mikayla Cheney '27 in the women's 1500. The event time was moved to accommodate the expected lightning and rain that came later in the day. The result was a race in the heat of the day. The heat approached the low 90s with fairly high humidity as our women prepared for the 3: p.m. start time. Both of our women were in heat number two and in looking at the field of competitors we felt good about our chances to advance. The top 5 in each 1500m preliminary heat and the next 4 time qualifiers advance to the Saturday quarterfinal. Charlotte and Mikayla ran well today and they did what we talked about doing. Charlotte hung around the back of the front pack and at the bell was in 8th place still in the hunt to move when the pace picked up. She was unable to match the quick pace over the final 400 meters and finished in 11th. She had a great junior year. She won multiple Star Meet titles, was our number 1 runner all year in cross country, led us to two Patriot League team championships (cross country, outdoor track and field), and set multiple program records. She is a star in every way imaginable. It was a disappointing end to the season but she was and remains a champion for us and will continue to lead us to more titles. Mikayla also executed the race plan today and got herself out into the top 6 and then held that spot the entire race. She was in contention to win the race at the bell as she challenged for the lead. The pace was somewhat pedestrian and there was a risk that whoever finished sixth would get knocked out of qualifying unless there was a really fast finish. A fast finish is what Mikayla delivered. She closed the final 400 meters in 63.47. It is the fastest last 400 she has ever run and it was enough to qualify her through to the quarterfinal on Saturday.
We had two regional qualifiers for the women's shot put this week. Jordan Hecht '27 came in as the 29th seed with a best of 15.93 meters (52' 3.25") and Emily Fink '25 came in tied for 14th with her personal best mark of 16.79 meters (55' 1"). As a result of the weather issues last evening, the shot was moved to this morning. Jordan set the tone with a personal best of 16.24 (53' 3.5") meters on her first attempt in flight two. She couldn't better that mark and finished 18th overall in the event; a result that won't sit well with her. Jordan doesn't go to meets to lose. She comes to win. So even though the mark she put up today was a significant personal best, is the second-best mark ever at the Academy and she finished much better than her incoming seed, Jordan is not happy. She has a sharp competitive edge in her personality that is shaped by winning. She has her process and that is part of what makes her so successful. I won't make excuses for her, she wouldn't like that, but I will tell it like it is. Jordan played soccer for the Army team in the fall. She missed out on a lot of development in the throws. What we are seeing now from her is a product of coach Woodbury's training, her discipline, and her talent. There is a lot of room for improvement and that will come with a full year of training and technical development. She is going to be dangerous in the future. A year from now, with a full fall preparation period, the shot is going to travel a bit farther than it did today. But for now, Jordan is unsatisfied and angry. I am sure she has a countdown going until this event is contested in 2026. Emily's first attempt on flight three (16.53m) was her best today. That mark held up as the 12th-best mark in the meet until the final few attempts in flight 4. The final scoreboard will show Emily finishing in 14th place at an event where the top 12 advance to the NCAA championship in Eugene. There can be no disappointment in the shot put career of Emily Fink. She will likely never pick up a shot again. That's ok. She retires from the event as the Army school record holder indoors and out. She is a multi-time Star Meet champion, a multi-time champion in the Patriot League, and the Service Academy record holder in the event both indoors and out. She is the best ring thrower in Army history. We will see her again in two weeks at the NCAA championship in the hammer throw. Two women in the top 20 is a great result for us today in the shot. We are having a very good meet as measured by where our people are ending up. It used to be that we would qualify a few people to this meet and they would get overwhelmed by the competition and struggle to match their seed position. Now we have multiple people competing to make the national championship. The bar has risen to a much higher level.
Second Lieutenant Javan Guevara-Cragwell '25 competed in the triple jump here today, and his collegiate career came to an end. His best mark came on his first attempt (14.74/48' 4.5"). He fouled his next two attempts and finished the competition in 37th place. He had a great career and in particular a great senior year. A quick glance at his competitive history tells the story. At the meets that mattered the most, where the team points were on the line, Javan got it done. Every time. The 2025 outdoor season was his best. He won the triple jump at the outdoor Star meet leading a 1-2 Army sweep and finished second in the long jump as part of a 1-2-3 sweep in that event. He followed up that success at the outdoor Patriot League meet with an individual title in the triple jump and a personal best in the long jump on his way to a fifth-place finish. The success that our team experienced in the horizontal jumps this winter and spring is in large part, due to his leadership. He will leave the Academy with his name firmly etched in the top 10 list in both the triple jump (third) and the long jump (fourth). However, it is his leadership that I will miss the most. He presided over one of the most successful horizontal jump groups that we have ever had at West Point. His guys didn't get the program record in either event, but they rewrote the top 10 list, they are young, and he leaves behind a legacy of hard work, attention to detail, and a winning attitude that will carry forward in his absence.
Nathan Davis '26 was our final competitor today in the 3000m Steeplechase. This is Nathan's third time competing at the NCAA East preliminary in the steeplechase. Last year, he came into the meet as one of the favorites to advance and just had a bad day and left the meet with some serious disappointment. Nathan has carried that feeling with him for the last 364 days. I know this because he told me the other day that he has been dreaming about his race tonight for an entire year. He has carried himself in training like he had some unfinished business and when he checked in with me last night, he told me "I'm so excited for tomorrow." The conditions today were not ideal. In fact, the conditions were difficult. The real feel temperature as we started the warm-up was in the mid 90's and the sun refused to hide behind any of the clouds. It was hot. We shortened his warm-up run to avoid raising his core temperature too much and had him wear a cooling vest during all of his mobility after he returned from the run. He told me later that during the run he looked down at his watch and noticed that he was running 6:00 minute mile pace "I was in the zone. I wasn't even trying to do that. I was just trying to get my legs going". That is pretty fast for what should be a simple jog. It was probably a function of his excitement and his fitness. Nathan was in the third of three heats in the steeple with the top 3 automatically advancing from each heat and the next three fastest times to the semifinal in Eugene, Oregon in two weeks. When the gun went off there was no clear separation of the runners and a tight pack formed with Nathan sitting in about 8th place for the first couple of laps. Nathan held the fourth best time of the men in his race so it was reasonable to expect him to compete near the front of the race and as the race started to spread out, he did exactly that. Nathan found himself in a pack of six men halfway through the race and that pack whittled down to four men over the last couple of laps. At the bell, Nathan was in fourth when one of the top three runners in front of him stumbled and fell right in front of him. Nathan hurdled him while he was down on the ground and found himself in third with 300 meters remaining. He looked good and kept pushing hard down the backstretch and caught a struggling Alabama runner right before the last water jump. Down the final straight, Nathan was clear of all but the leader and easily claimed the runner-up spot in 8:38.72. His time set a new personal best and new Academy record. Most importantly, he avenged his disappointment from a year ago. It was a great race under some very difficult conditions. Afterward, he was brimming with confidence. In the tent post-race, Coach Moore asked him, "Nathan, when did you know you were going to make it?" Without hesitation he replied, "When I was on the starting line." He said it with a smile on his face and while there is great humor in that statement there is also a hint of truth lying underneath it. He was determined, he was physically prepared, and he was confident. And then he went out and ran to his potential. Today was a big step forward for him. He has a new challenge awaiting him in Eugene in two weeks. He will be ready for that one as well.
We had three women compete on Day Four of the NCAA East Preliminary round. Sophia Dykstra '25 was our first competitor today in the women's discus. Sophia has been one of our key leaders all year and today she knew she was stepping into the ring for the final time. She didn't have the kind of day that she wanted but in the end, she did have the kind of year that she wanted. She leaves collegiate throwing as the Academy record holder in the discus. She walks away with multiple Star Meet individual titles and a Patriot League team championship. She was a star for us in the ring and as a leader on our team. She will be missed. Mikayla Cheney '27 closed out her season in the quarterfinal of the 1500-meter race. The pace got going early and then settled down in the middle of the race. Mikayla planted herself into the middle of the race and was right where she needed to be when the pace started to ramp up with 500 meters to go. At the bell, she was just off the main pack of women but then they got away from her and she was unable to close the gap. She finishes the season with five Academy records to her credit. She holds more records than any man or woman in the history of the Army program. She is certainly disappointed that her season ended without advancing to the NCAA championship, but she is young and will be here again to write a different ending. Our final competitor today was Joanna Halfhill '25. Joanna qualified for this meet two weeks ago with the best race of her life at Princeton. When the gun went off today, the pace went out fast and hard. Joanna folded herself into a pack of women who were running 80-second laps and held her own until the last kilometer. The pack got away from her at that point, and she was unable to catch back up over the last few laps. She had a great career in the Army singlet. She did it all for our program. She won individual titles, set records, and led our teams to three Patriot League team titles. She will be missed on the grass, on the track, and in the locker room. Our postseason will continue for both the men and the women at the NCAA championships in Eugene in two weeks. We will attempt to score team points for the first time in 35 years on the women's side and 24 years on the men's side. Emily Fink '25 (hammer throw) and Nathan Davis '26 (3000m steeplechase) are ready to take on that challenge.
Players Mentioned
