Bruins’ outdoor outlook promising
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 29, 2001 9:00 p.m.
TRACK & FIELD NCAA
Championships May 30-June 2 All Day Eugene, Ore.
By Christina Teller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
All the hotels in the Eugene area are booked, and they have been
for weeks. Hundreds of people are flocking to Eugene, Ore., and
it’s not for a logging convention, but for the NCAA Track and
Field Championships.
Four days of competition will take place in Hayward Stadium,
regarded by many as a haven for track and field, and at the end
there will be one team left standing.
UCLA hopes that this year it will be them.
It has been 18 years since the women last won the outdoor title,
and though they are just as hungry this season as they have been in
the past, the Bruins see the title as more of a realistic
possibility this year.
“We’re in a position now where we have the personnel
to (win nationals),” Head Coach Jeanette Bolden said.
“We’re in a better position to win than we have been in
previous years.”
Having owned the No. 1 national ranking for the majority of the
outdoor season, it’s the Bruins’ title to lose. With
two top-ranked athletes in their events, junior Tracy O’Hara
in the pole vault and freshman Sheena Johnson in the 400-meter
hurdles, and two ranked second, senior Shakedia Jones in the 100m
and senior Christina Tolson in the hammer throw, UCLA has a strong
chance of bringing home the title.
And what may help contribute the most to the Bruins’
success is not the highly-ranked athletes but the balance in this
year’s squad.
The Bruins go deep in terms of competitors, having qualified 15
athletes in 13 events ““ four seniors, five juniors, one
sophomore and five freshmen.
What is most notable is that three athletes qualified in the
800m. A strong middle distance squad is something that Distance
Coach Eric Peterson has been striving for, and after seeing how
past national championships were won, the UCLA coaching staff
adjusted its recruiting strategy.
That adjustment has resulted in junior Ysanne Williams, freshman
Lena Nilsson and sophomore Tiffany Burgess all qualifying for the
half-mile.
“Never as a coach have I had more than one person qualify
in one event,” Peterson said, “and it’s an
indication as to how strong our team has been in the
800m.”
Though the Bruins are now competing for the national title, they
will face some familiar competition. Crosstown rival USC, a team
that finished just ahead of the Bruins last year for second place,
is another legitimate title-contender with 14 women qualified.
Even though this will be the third time this season the Bruins
have lined up against the Trojans, according to Bolden, they will
approach USC as just another group of athletes.
“We know that we’re going as a team and ‘SC
isn’t a factor,” Bolden said. “They’re one
of a group of teams that are going to be there. Whatever (USC)
does, it’s not monitored as closely as what everyone
does.”
And Bolden believes that her team has not shown its full
strength yet this year, as the Bruins captured the Pac-10
championship while holding powerful competitors Jones, senior
multi-eventer Michelle Perry, and Nilsson out of events that they
could have scored in.
According to Jones, her team is approaching this championship
with a level head and not putting pressure on themselves to bring
home the title.
“I think that was the problem in previous years, that we
wanted it too bad and stressed over it too much, and people started
getting hurt,” she said. “This year everyone is just
relaxing and out to do their job.”
Entering competition, the Bruins are in position for top-three
finishes in the pole vault, shot put, hammer throw, discus, 100m
and the 400m hurdles.
Tolson is the 2001 indoor shot put champion and O’Hara won
both indoor and outdoor titles in the pole vault in 2000. But
anything can happen once competition is underway.
What the meet may come down to is the relays. In both the Pac-10
championships and the UCLA-USC dual meet, the meet was decided in
the 4 x 400m relay, and that may be the case in this meet as well.
In the 4 x 400m, the UCLA team of freshman Adia McKinnon, Johnson,
Williams and Perry sits in fifth with a time of 3:32.76, while the
USC group of junior Natasha Neal, senior Carla Estes, senior Malika
Edmonson and senior Brigita Langerholc is right behind them in
sixth at 3:33.17. But South Carolina leads the pack at 3:28.24.
But the Bruins have been preparing for this meet all year. With
successful trips to both the Texas and Penn Relays this season,
UCLA has big-meet experience that may pay off at the end.
