BLUE DRAGON WOMEN EARN BEST INDOOR NATIONALS FINISH IN HISTORY
Hutchinson CC Sports Information
TOPEKA – Led by Mildred Rono and Xylavene Beale, the Hutchinson Community College women's track and field team earned its best finish in the NJCAA Indoor Championship history with a fifth-place showing on Saturday at the Sneed Indoor Athletic Facility.
The Region 6 and Jayhawk West champion Blue Dragons scored 57 points and earned All-America honors in nine events over the two-day national championship. Iowa Western won the team title with 111 points. New Mexico Junior College was second with 89 points, followed by Odessa in third with 62, Barton in fourth with 60 and the Blue Dragons.
The day started with the Blue Dragons earning Central Region season awards. Rono was named the Central Region Track Athlete of the Year. Beale was named the Central Region Field Athlete of the Year. Head coach Robert Spies was named both the Central Region women's and men's Coach of the Year.
Rono made Blue Dragon history on Saturday becoming the first Blue Dragon women's track and field athlete to earn four All-America awards in the same meet.
On Friday, Rono ran the anchor leg of Hutchinson's third-place Distance Medley Relay and was second in the 5,000 meters.
On Saturday, Rono was the national runner-up in the 3,000 meters with a time of 9:33.63. Earlier in the day, Rono finished fourth in the Mile run with a school-record time of 4:50.37.
Candice Roberson, Tina Ward, Chelsea Blaufuss and Adriana Janic were the only Blue Dragon indoor three-time All-Americans in the same meet.
Rono scored 25.5 points for the Blue Dragons in the 2026 championships.
One day after winning the national shot put championship, Beale was in the hunt for another title in the women's weight throw.
Beale unloaded a school-record and event-leading throw of 59 feet, 2 inches on her first attempts in the preliminary round. That mark stood as the event leader until Mesa's Maleah Tucker unleased a threw of 60 feet, 8 inches in the second round of the finals.
Beale is the first two-time first-team All-American in a single meet since Janic won both the Pentathlon and 60-meter hurdles in 2018. Beale scored 18 points for the Blue Dragons.
Two other Blue Dragon athletes scored points on Saturday.
Freshman Sabrina McDonald played fifth in the 600-meter finals with a time of 1:33.73, the fastest time by a Blue Dragon in the NJCAA Indoor Championships.
Freshman Ashara Frater was sixth in the 3,000 meters with a personal-best time of 9:49.13. That time ranks No. 2 in Blue Dragon indoor history. Frater just missed scoring in the Mile Run with a ninth-place time of 5:02.26.
Freshman Kimberlin Lovell posted a PR and the sixth-fastest time in Blue Dragon history when she finished 17th in the 3,000 meters with a time of 10:37.85.
The Blue Dragons open their 2026 outdoor season on March 28 at the Mark A Phillips Invitational in Arkansas City.