EMPORIA, Kan.  There's no Toto or Dorothy to detour the ride, but six Western Colorado track athletes will be competing in Kansas Thursday through Saturday, May 21-23, at the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships, hosted by Emporia State University at the Hornets' Welch Stadium.

The Mountaineer program will have four women and two men competing at the national meet.

All six athletes will compete on the opening day of the meet, beginning with Tyler Nord in the men's 1,500-meter run and Peyton Weiss and Emma Kjellsen in the women's 1,500.

Myia Dantzler will step into the blocks next in the women's 100m dash, then in the early evening Jan Thewes will race in the men's 3,000m steeplechase followed by Annaka Rudolph in the final event of the day, the women's 10,000m run.

Scheduled for a second event at the meet is Nord, who will compete in the men's 5,000m run on Saturday.

Except for Rudolph in the 10,000, the others Mountaineers on Thursday will be competing in preliminary heats, racing to earn spots in their respective event finals.

Dantzler will be looking to advance to the final in the 100. Thursday's prelims will consist of three heats, she'll race in the first heat, with the top two from each heat plus the next two fastest times advancing to the final on Saturday afternoon.

The men's and the women's 1,500s will each consist of two heats, with the top four in each heat plus the next four fastest times advancing to the championship final on Saturday.

Thewes in the steeplechase will also race in the prelims under the same conditions, two heats with the top four from each and the next four fastest advancing, but into a Friday early-evening championship final.

Rudolph's 10,000 and Nord's 5,000 will both be timed final events, requiring each to race their events just once.

Dantzler enters the championship meet seeded 15th in the 100, with a school and career record time of 11.51 seconds, setting that Mountaineer record in the preliminary heats of the 100 at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference outdoor championship meet.

Weiss has the seventh fastest time in the 1,500 entering the meet, 4 minutes, 20.68 seconds, a career-best time set at the Bryan Clay Invitational in Azusa, Calif., in mid-April. Seeded 16th, Kjellsen's entry time of 4:25.68 is an altitude adjusted time (4:31.00) from the early-April Maverick Invite in Grand Junction, Colo.

Nord's No. 7 seed time of 3:42.10 in the men's 1,500 is also from the Maverick Invite, adjusted from his 3:46.55 clocking at altitude in Grand Junction.

Thewes will be the sixth seed in the men's steeplechase, posting his career-best time of 8:47.87 at the Bryan Clay, where Rudolph posted her career best of 35:09.56 to enter the national meet with the 20th fastest time in the women's 10,000.

Nord enters Saturday's men's 5,000 as the fifth seed in the event, his entry time of 13:44.56 a career best time he ran to at the Bryan Clay.

Entries for each of the individual events at the national meet were capped at 22 competitors, drawn from the NCAA's national provisional times list.