NEW YORK, N.Y. (February 8, 2020) – The Northern Arizona track & field team's current and future were on display at the 113th NYRR Millrose Games with senior
Geordie Beamish and incoming signee Nico Young shining bright on Saturday in the world's premier international indoor track and field meet.
In the meet's grand finale – the historic Wanamaker Mile – Beamish set a new personal-best in the indoor mile with a time of 3:56.90. His time on Saturday crushed his previous PR set at the NCAA Indoor Championships last season by nearly 10 full seconds and was almost two seconds better than his altitude-converted time of 3:58.17@ last month.
Beamish, the reigning indoor mile national champion, placed sixth overall in the Wanamaker Mile behind the second-fastest split (56.69) in the final 400 meters. Only Chris O'Hare, this year's Wanamaker Mile champion, ran a faster last quarter-mile (56.66) by three-hundredths of a second. Beamish's final kick pushed him up from ninth to sixth at the finish line.
"The race went out slower than anticipated so right away the dynamic of the race changed," said assistant coach
Jarred Cornfield. "Geordie did a really good job of navigating the race and in a month, he's going to feel a lot better after more training. He executed and competed really well. He closed well and I was really happy with the way he embraced the competition and he ended up beating some of the best guys in the world."
Among those that Beamish outkicked were Filip Ingebrigtsen, a world championship medalist, and Eric Jenkings, the 2017 Wanamaker Mile champion, who finished seventh and eighth respectively.
Prior to Beamish's performance in the mile, Young broke the national high school record in the 3000m run with a time of 7:56.97. Young, the nation's top 2020 cross country and distance recruit, broke the previous record of 7:59.33 by almost two and a half seconds as he became only the second athlete to ever run sub-eight minutes in the 3K indoors.
Young, who will join the Lumberjacks in the fall, narrowly missed the American U20 indoor 3K record of 7:56.31 by six-tenths of a second. However, Young will have multiple opportunities to still break that record once he dons on the Blue & Gold.
"Nico is a really special athlete and we're super excited for him to join our program," Cornfield said. "He was in a pro race and he's only in high school. To see him compete with those guys and his composure really impressed me. He ran awesome and we're more than excited for him to be a Lumberjack in the very near future. He's going to do some damage at the NCAA level."
