MARY CIECEK/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Senior
Michelle Perry battles with San Diego State’s
Aja Frary during the final event of the
heptathalon. Perry finished second overall. USC 64
UCLA 55 Arizona 44
By Christina Teller
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
EUGENE, Ore. “”mdash; Going into the NCAA 2001 Women’s
Track and Field Championships, UCLA and USC were favored for the
title.
And on Saturday night, it was the Trojans who took home the
overall win with 64 points. UCLA followed with 55 points and
Arizona with 44.
But the Bruins have nothing to hang their heads about as they
brought home six top-three individual finishes. And with its young
roster, UCLA is in good position for 2002.
“I have a young team this year, and most of them
hadn’t had experience at nationals before,” UCLA Head
Coach Jeanette Bolden said. “I’m really energized
because I know what didn’t happen for us this
year.”
The difference between the two Southern California schools may
be due largely to experience.
Every member of USC’s team had competed at the national
level before, with the exception of freshman Inga Stasiulionyte,
who took first in the javelin competition.
But the Bruins didn’t walk away empty handed, in fact they
closed out competition with the best sequence of performances all
week.
The trio of seniors, Christina Tolson, Shakedia Jones and
Michelle Perry, all turned in second-place finishes and a total of
24 points for the team.
Tolson entered the hammer throw competition seeded No. 2 and
ended up there behind Southern Methodist University’s
Florence Ezeh, who set a meet and Hayward Field record of
219-feet-4 inches. Julianna Tudja of USC finished behind Tolson
with 210-11.
Tolson opened up competition with a tremendous throw that went
just foul, but she came back on her next throw to move onto the
finals.
On the last round of throws, Tudja had pulled closer, but
Tolson’s cemented her lead with a 215-foot throw.
“It was expected of me,” Tolson said of her finish.
“I wish I had the strength that I had on that first throw.
But it’s a nice way to go out,” she added about her
shot put title and finish in the hammer.
In the 100m dash, Jones just advanced to Friday’s
semifinal with the fastest preliminary time (11.11 seconds), then
won her heat and advanced to Saturday’s final with the
second-best time (11.49), behind USC’s Angela Williams.
Jones knew that running in the lane next to Williams, the
two-time defending champion, would help her get out fast. And that
she did.
Jones stayed with Williams until the last 40 meters, when
Williams pulled away for her unprecedented third title in the
event.
But Williams (11.05) knew that Jones (11.10) didn’t let
her have the race.
“Shakedia gets out fast too,” Williams said after
the race. “Near the end, I was like “˜oh no, am I going
to lose this,’ but I didn’t panic, and I think that
shows how I’ve matured as a runner.
“But (Shakedia) was moving and working hard. I respect her
for that.”
But what is even more remarkable than the 100m race was
Perry’s 11-event performance over the four-day meet. She
finished with a total of 5,759 points in only her second heptathlon
ever, and score two points for the Bruins in her seventh-place
finish in the 400m hurdles in the midst of heptathlon
competition.
The final places in the heptathlon came down to the 800m, the
final event, in which Perry ran 2:14.36, an eight-second personal
record to secure herself a second-place overall finish.
But she wasn’t done yet as she ran the opening leg of the
Bruins’ 4 x 400m relay.
According to Bolden, Perry gave up her relay spot to a freshman
at indoor as long as she could run it at outdoor nationals.
Along with the successful events were those that left the Bruins
feeling unsettled, most notably the 800m final and the pole
vault.
The pole vault got underway Friday evening in chilly
temperatures and a strong headwind ““ not exactly ideal
weather for pole vaulting.
Though junior Tracy O’Hara, the 2000 indoor and outdoor
champion, finished second, there was a clear sense of frustration
after the event.
O’Hara said it just wasn’t her night, but it
didn’t seem to be many other women’s night as the
winning height was 13-9 1/4 and the winner was determined by
counting the misses of that height. The final three competitors,
O’Hara, Arizona’s Andrea Dutoit and Duke’s
Jillian Schwartz, did not clear 14-1 1/4.
To add a twist to the situation, Georgia’s Thorey
Elisadottir, who had entered competition at No. 2, fell out of the
race at 13-9 1/4 but protested and was allowed a fourth attempt
because she said that the standards were not adjusted as she had
requested during her final attempt.
With Elisadottir’s fourth-place finish, five vaulters were
bumped down a place, including UCLA’s junior Heather Sickler.
Sickler was then not able to score for her team as she ended in
ninth place.
The 800m was also unpleasant for several coaches and athletes.
Eight women originally qualified for the event, but after protests
two more athletes were allowed into the final.
A ten-woman field made the final a congested race, and both
Bruin entrants, junior Ysanne Williams and freshman Lena Nilsson,
were affected by the large pack.
“There shouldn’t have been that many athletes in the
race,” Williams said. “I was on the outside and I was
still getting tripped up.”
Nilsson, who was near the back of the pack through most of the
race, took a fall with 200m to go when Florida’s Kamille
Bratton fell. Bratton had fallen in the semifinal round as
well.
“It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances,”
UCLA Distance Coach Eric Peterson said after the race. “When
Lena fell, it was just too late in the race to recover.”
The same could be said for the Bruins in the team race. With
some unexpected falters early on and the controversy in the vault
and half-mile, it seemed to be too much for the Bruins to recover
from.
But that doesn’t take anything away from USC, which won
its first women’s title ever.
“USC competed as well as any team I’ve seen in my
eight years of coaching,” Peterson said. “They did what
we were able to do indoors, in having everyone score so that it
took the pressure off the stars.
“Coming into today, we needed them to open the door for
us, and there was no reason for them to do that. So hats off to
them. You have to congratulate them on that performance.”
And though they didn’t win the title, the Bruins had a
successful season and will be back next year.