TAMPA -- With their individual opportunities extinguished, it was going to take a team effort for Bethune-Cookman to send more people to the NCAA National Outdoor Track and Field Championships.

Well, you know what they say about team work, and in this case, the dream will be working in two weeks at Track Town in Eugene, Oregon.

The Wildcats qualified two relay teams -- the women's 4X100 and the men's 4X400 -- to the national meet Saturday with top 12 finishes Saturday at the East Preliminary at the University of South Florida.

Sade McCreath-Tardiel, Jonina Brinson, Monae Nichols and Quamecha Morrison finished tenth with a 44.49 while the men's 4X400 squad of Jordan Williams, Christopher Jackson, Caleb Okwaraji and Jonathan Moore was fifth in 3:06.79, just ahead of North Carolina A&T's 3:06.81.

Next up:  The NCAA's June 6-9 in Eugene, Oregon. It'll be the first time a Bethune-Cookman women's relay team has appeared in the national meet.

Everyone on the women's team but Brinson missed on qualifying in their respective individual events Thursday and Friday, while Jackson and Okwaraji came up short in their events. Williams (400) and Moore (800) had punched their tickets to Eugene, and getting their teammates out west was their top priority.

"I wanted to get Chris and Caleb to Oregon, so I had a chip on my shoulder." Williams admitted.

In a steady rain, the men's 4X400 stayed in the top three the entire race, and Moore's anchor leg of 46.06 kept the Wildcats in position for the automatic berth. LSU won the heat in 3:06.26, followed by Rutgers in 3:06.77. Western Kentucky (3:06.41) and Florida (3:06.61) won their respective heats.

"My teammates put me in position for the last leg," Moore said. "All I had to do was stay on LSU's hip."

The women's 4X100 was sixth in a speedy opening heat that included Kentucky, Tennessee, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Clemson, but its school record time kept the likes of Ohio State, North Carolina, Duke and Penn State at bay.
 
All season, the team's line-up has been changed frequently, but this one works.

"We just had to put it together," Brinson said. "Coach [Tyree] Price knew which leg to put each one of us in. It was hard to trust him,  but we gave in and look what it did for us."

Head Coach Donald Cooper deflected all the credit to Price and Coach Garon Jackson.

"in the beginning of the year, I made the decision to give the responsibility of the 4X100 team to Coach Price and the 4x400 to Coach Jackson," Cooper said. "I'm extremely proud of those guys for getting everything they could out of the athletes and putting the University in a position to get us to Oregon.

"When things didn't go well for us individually, we still had opportunities on the table and took advantage of them," Cooper added."
 
Narrowly missing out was the men's 4X100 team of Kareem Fair, Henrick Bailey, Williams and Randy Green, who was edged by Kentucky for the third and final automatic berth from its heat. Its school record time of 39.64 was the 14th overall -- Penn State earned the final berth with a 39.61.

Also competing Saturday were Joel Sampson (36th in triple jump, 47'9 ¾) and Jeremiah Peters (42nd in shot put, 54 3 ¼).