GOLDEN, Colo.  Emma Alford set a new personal best and earned a second-team all-conference honor in the women's triple jump with a fifth-place finish Saturday on Day 2 of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Outdoor Track & Field Championships. 

Alford landed a leap of 11.62 meters (38 feet-1.25 inches) on her very first attempt in the competition at the Stermole Track & Field Complex at the Colorado School of Mines, and the mark held up to crack the top six and earn the all-RMAC honor. 

In the men's triple jump competition, Nolan Kemper put down a mark of 13.49m (44-3.00) on the second of his six attempts, snaring the final scoring spot on the podium with his eighth-place finish. 

The men's 3,000m steeplechase elevated a pair of Western runners to the podium in the final event on Saturday evening. Eddie Siuda and Kyle Partin teamed up to take third and fourth, respectively, Siuda with a 9:20.91 clocking and Partin just behind in 9:24.36. 

Siuda's third place earns first-team All-RMAC honors, while Partin picks up a second-team all-conferance award. 

In Saturday's preliminary heats of several events, the Mountaineers were able to push four runners into their respective championship finals on Sunday, the concluding day of the meet. 

In the first event on the track Saturday, Western's Nellie Wartanian sprinted to a career-best time of 24.22 seconds in the women's 200m dash – just 4/100ths of a second off the NCAA Division II provisional time in the event. The top two finishers from each of three heats plus the next two fastest times advanced to Sunday's final. Wartanian was one of the automatic qualifiers with her second-place finish in heat three. 

Shortly after Wartanian's sprint, Peyton Weiss became the second Mountaineer to move on to a championship final. 

Weiss, facing the same qualifying standards as the 200, earned automatic advancement to Sunday in the women's 800m run with her second place in Heat 2, cruising across the finish line with a time of 2 minutes, 16.43 seconds, which will seed her in the fifth position. 

The hurdlers were the next competitors with the opportunity to move on from the prelims, and Western successfully pushed one through in both the women's and men's events. 

Kelia Portis scored the final spot for Sunday's championship final of the women's 100m hurdles. She will be seeded eighth after registering a time of 14.86 in the third heat of Saturday's prelims. 

In the men's 110m hurdles, the Mountaineers' James Duncan won Heat 3 with a time of 14.62, a time that will place him as the No. 3 seed in the championship final on Sunday. 

The championship meet starts its final day at Stermole on Sunday morning with field events kicking off at 9 a.m. The 4x100 relays will be the first events on the track, slated for a 12 p.m. start with the women's heats of the relay.