For the second straight day, fractions of a second separated Micah Chelimo of UAA and Kevin Batt of Adams State in their bid to win an NCAA Division II indoor track and field championship in North Carolina.
On Friday, Batt was the 5,000-meter champion by three-hundredths of a second.
On Saturday, it was Chelimo eking out a win at the finish line, crossing just one-hundredth of a second ahead of Batt in the 3,000-meter race to claim his fourth national title.
Chelimo won two titles in 2012, in cross country and the outdoor 5,000 meters, and added a third by claiming last year's indoor 5,000 title.
A senior from Kenya, Chelimo finished in 8 minutes, 15.52 seconds after taking the lead seven minutes in. He now has a program-best eight All-America track and field awards (four indoor, four outdoor) to go along with four All-America cross country awards for a career total of 12.
Joyce Kipchumba and Karolin Anders also earned All-America honors Saturday to give UAA nine for the two-day meet -- bringing the school's total to 19 in just its second full season of indoor competition.
Anders finished fourth in the pentathlon, scoring a school-record 3,775 points. It was her second indoor All-America award and her third overall. Among pentathletes, Anders tied for second in high jump with a leap of 5 feet, 7 inches and recorded a season-best distance of 39 feet, 1.75 inches in shot put to place fourth. She took seventh in the long jump and the 800 and finished 10th in the 60-meter hurdles.
Kipchumba became the third UAA woman to earn two All-America awards at the same championship meet with a sixth-place performance in Saturday's 3,000-meter race. She also finished sixth in Friday's 5,000.
With six athletes, UAA's women finished 13th in team standings with 16 points.
Chelimo was the only UAA man at the meet and scored 18 points, putting the Seawolves in a tie for ninth in the team standings. Saint Augustine's University (84.5 points) won the men's team title while Adams State (67) claimed the women's title.
Anchorage Daily News