BOZEMAN — Montana State track and field has qualified a program-record four Bobcats to the 2025 NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships next week in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
Shelby Schweyen (pentathlon), Colby Wilson (pole vault), Harvey Cramb (mile), and Rob McManus (mile) will all represent Montana State at the national championship meet held March 14-15 at the Virginia Beach Sports Center.
The meet will air on the ESPN family of networks.
Qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships is among the hardest things to do in college athletics. There are no regional qualifiers — only the top-16 marks in NCAA Division I in each event are invited to the national meet.
"The NCAA Indoor Championships are the hardest of the NCAA championships to get into," head coach Lyle Weese said. "The marks that the individuals have to get to get into the meet are truly elite, so to have four make it is a great testament to their ability and all of the time and effort that the student-athletes put in to get to this level."
Montana State track and field has qualified 19 athletes all-time for the NCAA indoor championships, and have qualified multiple athletes to one meet just twice: Lucy Corbett (high jump) and Duncan Hamilton (3,000 meters) both qualified in 2022 and 2023.
Next week, Montana State will send four to the big stage.
Schweyen, a senior from Missoula, qualified by a single point in the pentathlon thanks to her Big Sky-record showing at the Bobcat Performance meet in Bozeman on Jan. 31.
Schweyen set personal-bests in all five events of the multi to tally 4,183 points, at the time the third-best mark in the country. After conference championship weekend, Schweyen's total is tied for No. 15 in NCAA Division I.
In 17th and just missing a qualifying mark was Cincinnati's Juliette Laracuente-Huebner, who tallied 4,182 points at the Big 12 Championships.
Schweyen is the first Bobcat to qualify for indoor nationals in the pentathlon and just the second multi-event athlete to do so — Jeff Mohl qualified in the heptathlon in 2013.
Wilson, a senior from Olympia, Washington, broke his own Big Sky record in the pole vault twice this season and enters next week's national championship meet tied for seventh in the country this year thanks to his clearance of 5.61 meters (18-04.75) at the Big Sky championships.
The four-time Big Sky champion is making his second appearance at a national meet after qualifying for the 2022 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, where he placed 20th to earn honorable mention All-American.
This season, Wilson first cleared 5.60 meters (18-04.50) at the Don Kirby Elite Invitational on Feb. 15 before backing it up with a clearance of 5.61 meters (18-04.75) at the Big Sky Championships on March 1.
Wilson is the first men's pole vault athlete from Montana State to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships and the second pole vaulter overall — Ellie Rudy won indoor national titles in 2007 and 2008.
Cramb, a sophomore from Brisbane, Australia, qualifies in the mile thanks to his altitude-converted time of 3:53.77 at the Big Sky Tuner in Bozeman on Feb. 20.
Cramb will be seeded 12th out of 16 competitors in the mile in Virginia Beach.
Cramb's time ranks third in program history, behind program legend Hamilton and fellow national qualifier Rob McManus.
Cramb placed second in the 800 meters and eighth in the mile at last week's Big Sky championships and was a regional qualifier in the 1,500 meters last spring.
McManus, a senior from Cashmere, Washington, qualifies in the mile thanks to his altitude-converted time of 3:53.59 at the Big Sky Tuner in Bozeman on Feb. 20.
McManus climbed to No. 2 in program history with that race and will be seeded 11th in Virginia Beach.
The current face of 'Steeple U,' McManus makes his first appearance at the NCAA Indoor Championships after back-to-back trips to the NCAA Outdoor Championships in 2023 and 2024.
McManus placed 13th in the 3,000-meter steeplechase to earn second-team All-American honors this past June in Eugene and placed 16th at the national meet in the 3,000-meter steeplechase to earn second-team All-American honors in 2023.
The two-time All-American has also been part of two NCAA Championship qualifying cross country teams at Montana State, helping the Cats to a 13th-place finish in 2023 and a 25th-place finish in 2022.
McManus will secure his third All-American honor when he competes in the mile next week, joining Levi Taylor, Hamilton, Weese, and Shannon Butler as the only Bobcat men to earn at least three All-American awards in track and field.
The Cats have had five previous qualifiers in the men's indoor mile: Hamilton (2021), Diego Leon (2018), Cristian Soratos (2015), Patrick Casey (2010), and Miguel Galeana (1998).
Incredibly, the mile times put up by Cramb (3:53.77) and McManus (3:53.59) would have been good enough to break the NCAA record in 2012 — the mile record set that year was 3:54.54.
In 2025, that time isn't in the top-16 marks put up at the Division I level and wouldn't be enough to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships.
On both the men's and women's sides, the Big Sky Conference qualified the seventh-most athletes for this year's national meet with nine men's entries and seven women's entries.
Just missing the cut were Hailey Coey, who finished No. 20 in the country in the long jump, and Sam Ells, who finished No. 29 in the mile.
"It's exciting to have qualifiers across event groups, and to have four is pretty special," Weese said. "To think about also that Hailey Coey was so close and Sam Ells was not too far off either, it is just such a shot in the arm to have individuals that are performing at that level. It impacts our program from top to bottom — for every individual to know that people in this program can be some of the very best at the NCAA level."
