Wichita State high jumper puts off baseball internship to jump in NCAA outdoor meet

Wichita State’s Ashley Petersen is supposed to be interning for the Lake Erie Crushers, an independent baseball team in Ohio. Marketing, operations, tickets — interns do it all.

“I keep delaying it on them,” Petersen said. “Working with baseball is probably what I’m going to be doing in the future. I played it until I was 12, until I was told I was a girl and I wasn’t allowed to play any more.”

Petersen owns a good excuse for putting off the Crushers. She qualified for the NCAA Championships in the high jump after qualifying fourth with a career-best leap of 5 feet, 10 3/4 inches in the NCAA West Preliminary meet on May 27 in Lawrence. She competes on Saturday in Eugene, Ore.

Petersen, a senior from Allegany, N.Y., takes a basic goal to Hayward Field. She wants to clear the bar, something she wasn’t able to do in 2014, after she qualified with a height of 5-9 3/4. After the 2014 outdoor season, she underwent surgery to alleviate tendonitis in her left knee and spent much of 2014-15 rehabbing. She finished second in the MVC outdoor meet, but didn’t qualify for the national meet.

“I just want to do better than last time,” she said, laughing. “I just want to make a bar, so hopefully that can happen.”

In 2014, the competition started at 5-7 3/4 in Fayetteville, Ark. In most competitions it starts at 5 feet, perhaps 5-4 at a conference championship. In Lawrence, she made 5-5 1/4 on her second attempt.

“She didn’t have your A-game, and you’ve got to have your A-game at this meet,” WSU coach Steve Rainbolt. “It’s a demanding stage. I really have a good feeling that it will go much better. She really performed beautifully, up in Lawrence, to get to this point.”

Petersen, a three-time Missouri Valley Conference champion, won’t know the starting height until Tuesday. Safe to say it will start at least four or five inches over her head.

“Ashley’s not the tallest high jumper among the group, but she sure is explosive,” Rainbolt said.

Petersen won’t spend her time worrying and plotting Saturday’s strategy.

“I’ve already and been there and I know how it is,” she said. “There’s no need for me to get in my head — just do what I know how to do and it should just happen. I did really well in Lawrence and I’m sure I can do it again.”

Not in Wichita — The Valley won’t hold any of its 10 championships (in which WSU sponsors a team) in Wichita in 2016-17.

Interim athletic director Darron Boatright said WSU bid on several championships, although the results didn’t upset him. WSU hosted two championships in each of the past two school years — baseball, softball, tennis, men’s golf.

“We’d love to host some every year,” he said. “I would have like to have had further consideration for volleyball, I think that one would have made some sense.”

Volleyball went to Northern Iowa. It was last held at WSU in 2013.

“I expect we’ll get back in the cycle,” Boatright said. “We bid on most of them each year.”

On the move — Two former Shockers changed jobs recently.

Matt Braeuer is director of operations for the men’s basketball team at College of Charleston. He joins head coach Earl Grant, a former WSU assistant.

Braeuer spent the past three seasons as an assistant coach at Sam Houston State. He played at WSU from 2004-08.

Danny Jackson is the new baseball coach at NCAA Division II McKendree (Ill.) University. He worked at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville the past six seasons and served as interim head coach part of the 2016 season.

Jackson played first base and pitched for WSU from 2003-07.

Worth noting — WSU women’s tennis player Gabriela Porubin is No. 104 in the final Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings. Porubin and Julia Schiller are No. 75 in the doubles ranking. As a team, WSU finished No 30.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 3:10 PM with the headline "Wichita State high jumper puts off baseball internship to jump in NCAA outdoor meet."