ST. PAUL, Minn. — Concordia-St. Paul's
Cam Mata (long jump) and
Mehlayna Straub (heptathlon) are each slated to compete at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Emporia, Kansas this week.
The 2026 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships will be held at Welch Stadium on the campus of Emporia State from May 21-23. The men's long jump is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, while women's heptathlon events will take place on Thursday and Friday. A full schedule of events can be found
here. Live results and a full event schedule are available at
https://results.leonetiming.com/?mid=8920. Track and jump events will be live streamed on
NCAA.com, while throwing events will be streamed on
MIAA Network.
Student-athletes qualified for the championships by reaching a provisional standard established for each event. For each individual event contested, the top 22 declared student-athletes were accepted into the competition. For the heptathlon and decathlon, the top 16 declared student-athletes were accepted into the competition. Athletes who finish in the top eight in their respective events will earn First Team All-America honors, while those who place ninth through 16th will be named Second Team All-Americans. Concordia's last outdoor All-America selection came in 2024, when Arika Harbo earned First Team honors in both the high jump and heptathlon. For the CSP men, Jakob Tordsen's First Team selection in 2022 stands as the most recent in the outdoor season.
It marks the first career selection to the NCAA Outdoor Championships for both athletes. Mata, who was previously selected to the 2026 NCAA Indoor Championships where he earned All-America Second Team honors in the long jump, ranks 12th among the 22 competitors with a qualifying distance of 24' 10", a Concordia school record. Straub's qualifying score of 5218 points ranks 10th among the field of 16 heptathletes.
At the NSIC Outdoor Championships earlier this month, Straub claimed the conference title in the heptathlon, and Mata earned All-NSIC honors with a second-place finish in the long jump.
