W. track: Top Bruins score bids to NCAAs
By Jeff Eisenberg
May 30, 2005 9:00 p.m.
Whatever chance the UCLA women’s track and field team has
to defend its national championship will rest on the shoulders of
its smallest contingent of qualifiers in almost a decade.
Eight Bruins earned bids to next week’s NCAA Championships
this past weekend at the West Regionals in Oregon ““ barely
half the number of athletes UCLA sent to Texas a year ago.
But the third-ranked Bruins do have some cause for optimism
after their second-place finish. Of their eight qualifiers, six are
former All-Americans who have succeeded at the NCAA level
before.
“I’ve told them all along, “˜Don’t look
at the quantity of the athletes we’re sending,'”
UCLA coach Jeanette Bolden said. “”˜Look at the
quality.’ Even though we don’t have as many athletes as
last year, we’re sending more No. 1s than we ever have
before.”
To escape Oregon’s venerable Hayward Field with their NCAA
title hopes intact, the Bruins had to advance all of their top
athletes and weather a heavy thunderstorm, which delayed the meet
for 1 hour and 40 minutes Saturday.
And despite a few near-disasters even before the weather
deteriorated, all of UCLA’s stars survived the weekend
unscathed.
Monique Henderson ran a national-leading 50.78 seconds to win
the 400 meters. Jessica Cosby fought through pneumonia to qualify
in the shot put and the hammer throw. Candice Baucham breezed
through the weekend in the long jump and triple jump. And
collegiate record-holder Chelsea Johnson, despite a near-disastrous
sixth-place finish in the pole vault, will almost certainly qualify
for NCAAs via an at-large bid.
“There were a lot of upsets, so for all of the people who
we were counting on to make it, I feel pretty good,”
Henderson said. “I would have liked to see some other people
qualify, but I still feel like we have a strong team.”
Of course, that team could have been even stronger had some of
UCLA’s less-experienced athletes enjoyed a breakout meet this
weekend.
Bolden had been hoping that this would be the weekend that long
jumper Renee Williams would snap out of her season-long slump, that
thrower Briona Reynolds would regain her form in the discus, and
that freshman Jolanda Diego would come of age in the 100
meters.
In each case, it didn’t happen. So while sophomore
MacKenzie Hill came through for the Bruins with a season-best 59.60
seconds in the 400-meter hurdles, Bolden left Oregon with
conflicted feelings about the weekend.
“You always have mixed emotions after a meet like
this,” she said. “We had people who should make it, and
they did. But you also feel for the athletes who are trying to get
to that position.”
For the past five years, UCLA has averaged 15 athletes at NCAAs,
finishing in the top three four times. The Bruins, who with
heptathlete Nastassja Hall will send nine athletes to Nationals in
Sacramento, are confident they can challenge top-ranked Texas and
No. 2 South Carolina for the title again this year, even with
perhaps their smallest margin for error in years.
“We know the situation,” UCLA hurdler Dawn Harper
said. “One error and the championship is lost. But we have to
try not to think about it. Once you start thinking that way,
that’s when you start messing up.”
With their championship hopes relying on only nine athletes,
however, mistakes aren’t something the Bruins can afford.
