Falcon seniors Grace Bley, Scout Cai & Kate Lilly to return for 2021 outdoor season...

Grace Bley
(SPU Athletics)

Seattle Pacific University announced Thursday that seniors Grace Bley, Scout Cai and Kate Lilly will return to the team for the 2021 outdoor season.

That opportunity became possible when the NCAA, after cancelling all of its spring championships and subsequently seeing conferences around the country shut down their entire spring schedules, announced on March 30 that spring sports student-athletes participating in 2020 would be able to retain this year of eligibility.

Current freshmen will still be eligible for four years, sophomores for three, juniors for two, and seniors who choose to return, such as Bley, Cai, and Lilly, for one.

Scout Cai (Paul Merca photo)

Bley is the two-time defending Great Northwest Athletic Conference champion in the 200-meter dash. She also ran on back-to-back GNAC meet-record 4-x-100 relay teams, and is part of the current SPU school record 4-x-100m relay squad, along with sophomores Peace Igbonagwam and Jenna Bouyer, and junior Julia Stepper.

Cai came into the spring looking to add to her collection of conference and national honors. She won last year's GNAC pole vault championship, then went on to become a double All-American at the NCAA meet, placing seventh in the heptathlon and eighth in the pole vault.

Kate Lilly (Paul Merca photo)

Lilly is one of the leading distance runners at both the conference and national levels. During this past winter's indoor season, she won her first-ever GNAC crown, taking the 3000 meters. Last spring, she raced to an All-American fifth-place finish in the 5000 at NCAAs. Just two weeks prior to that, Lilly was second in the 1500 and fourth in the 5000 at conference.

"Scout and Grace and Kate are obviously some of the best athletes on our team. But they're also people who bring a lot of other things to our community and our team," Falcon heat coach Karl Lerum said. "It's what they bring in terms of leadership as well as just the value of this time we get together."

All three will train on their own until the start of winter quarter in January 2021. They then can join the team for training (They will not compete indoors, as they have used all four years of eligibility for the winter season, but could compete as unattached athletes).

NOTE: The sports information office of Seattle Pacific University contributed to this report.

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