The Texas women’s track and field squad had a successful NCAA Championship qualification week as it advanced a best-in-the-nation 16 entries in 11 events to the championship meet beginning next Wednesday.

Head coach Beverly Kearney said Texas’ huge success was due to her team’s depth.

“The one thing that we said we had to do was just to get to the next level,” she said. “We finally have enough volume to where we can sustain a few errors that might happen at a meet.”

Because of some last-minute heroics, most of Texas’ qualifiers earned their spots on the final day of the three-day qualifying meet. Nine athletes and two relays, both the 4×100 meter and 4×400 meter teams, qualified.

The 400-meter relay team of senior Chantel Malone, freshman Allison Peter, freshman Christy Udoh and sophomore Chalonda Goodman ran a 44.00 for the second-fastest time of the day. They will be the first Texas 4×100 meter relay to run at the national meet since 2007.

The 2011 national meet will be held June 8-11 in Des Moines, Iowa.