Folkestad & Rhonemus Headed To South Carolina
Cobber seniors Cooper Folkestad and Wade Rhonemus are officially headed to South Carolina to compete in the NCAA Outdoor Championship Meet. The pair of Concordia athletes will compete at the national meet on May 23-26 in Myrtle Beach, S.C. at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium.
MOORHEAD, Minn. (5/22/24)---Cobber seniors Cooper Folkestad and Wade Rhonemus are officially headed to South Carolina to compete in the NCAA Outdoor Championship Meet. The pair of Concordia athletes will compete at the national meet on May 23-26 in Myrtle Beach, S.C. at Doug Shaw Memorial Stadium.
Both Folkestad and Rhonemus represented Concordia at the NCAA Indoor National Meet in March where the duo earned Team All-American honors by finishing in the Top 16 of an event.
| 2024 NCAA National Outdoor Meet Schedule & Live Results |
Folkestad is making his second NCAA Outdoor Championship Meet appearance. He also went to nationals in 2022 in the shot put.
Folkestad will be competing in both the discus and shot put at the NCAA National Meet. He earned his trip to nationals at the NDSU Tune-Up Meet for the discus and at the MIAC Championship Meet for the shot put. Folkestad launched the discus a personal-best distance of 170-05 at NDSU. He enters nationals seeded 14th in the event. He saved his best for last in the shout put – winning the MIAC title and posting his NCAA qualifying distance on the very last attempt of the meet. Folkestad came through with a mark of 56-00 at the conference meet which is the second farthest distance in program history and No.9 in DIII this season.
Folkestad will compete at nationals on Thursday, May 23 at 10 a.m. (CDT) in the discus and on Friday, May 24 at 12:30 p.m. in the shot put.
Rhonemus, who is making his fourth NCAA Meet appearance (2 outdoor, 2 indoor) needed to go to the final meet of the season before posting a score in the decathlon that got him a plane ticket to South Carolina.
Rhonemus finished third in the decathlon at the MIAC Meet with 6,416 points. At the time that mark was No.11 in Division III but as scores from across the country coming in, he suddenly found himself on the outside of the qualifying bubble. Rhonemus traveled to St. Olaf to compete in the last-chance qualifier multi-event and improved his score by 24 points which pushed him inside the Top 22 qualifying range and got him to nationals.
Rhonemus will start his final collegiate multi-event on Thursday, Mat 23 at 11 a.m. (CDT).