Many men’s track and field athletes rest up, while others post personal bests at Rafer Johnson/Jackie Joyner-Kersee Invitational
By Lee Witbeck
April 13, 2011 6:03 p.m.
For a track meet bearing the names of two of the sport’s greatest competitors, the Rafer Johnson/Jackie Joyner-Kersee Invitational was surprisingly void of competitive fire.
A week after a dominating win by the No. 21 UCLA men’s track and field team over Tennessee, the Bruins seemingly took a week off from the team-wide improvement marking the previous two matches.
UCLA withheld many athletes from competition in order to rest up for next week’s showdown against No. 10 Oregon, but assistant coach Forest Braden thought that to be only part of the problem.
“Texas, and Tennessee, and looking at Oregon next week, they’re just fired up, ready to go, ready to compete for the team,” Braden said. “Competing as an individual, they just didn’t get up for it as much as if the team was on the line, they had to get that point. … Just that little bit of fire was missing that they had been displaying in the past.”
Despite an unspectacular effort from the Bruins, including a six-foul performance from the usually stellar freshman Alec Faldermeyer, UCLA found several stunning individual performances, led by sophomore decathlete Dominic Giovannoni and senior jumper Johnathan Clark.
Clark was not originally scheduled to compete in the meet but was given the green light to go on Saturday. The decision panned out, as Clark set a new lifetime best of 53 feet, 0.75 inches. Three of his six jumps were better than his previous best. Clark said the great competition helped push the number higher.
“That was one of the reasons I begged the coaches to let me compete,” Clark said. “When you get a chance to compete against a field like that, it just pushes you to do better.”
Highlighting the professional and unaffiliated competitors were Olympian Shawn Crawford, former Bruin Jon Rankin and current U.S. athlete Jason Richardson, as well as sponsored runners from Mizuno, ASICS and others.
Friday, Giovannoni ran away from the field in the decathlon, setting a new personal record with a score of 7,192 points topping his previous personal best by almost 700 points.
“My training over the past months have been better than anything I’ve had in the past. I’ve just been working really well with my coaches and with my teammates,” Giovannoni said.
Even though he posted an incredible score, coach Mike Maynard feels that Giovannoni could improve by up to 200 more points.
Both Johnson and Joyner-Kersee were on hand to witness the meet, and many athletes got the opportunity to meet the pair of world-class track stars and Bruin legends.
