A first place finish and a new personal record make a great way
to start a season.
But Cari Soong hopes it’s just the beginning.
Soong, who won the weight throw competition Saturday at the
Husky Invitational in Seattle with a 67-foot, 8.25-inch heave,
hopes to be clearing the 70-foot mark later this season.
“And once I get to that, ask me for a new mark,” she
said.
The third-place finisher at the NCAA Indoor Championships last
season, Soong automatically qualified for the meet with
Saturday’s performance, and hopes to challenge
Florida’s Kim Barrett and Candice Scott for the individual
title in 2004. Her previous best mark was 67-4.25, set last
March.
“I’ve been having really good practices,”
Soong said. “I actually threw longer in warm-ups Saturday,
but I was still happy with my mark.”
Soong’s strength training has been arduous lately, but she
plans to ease off in the next few weeks. Once she does that, she
expects her marks to continue to soar.
NEW HEIGHTS: It took Chelsea Johnson exactly
one meet longer than she had expected to finally clear the 14-foot
barrier for the first time.
One meet and seven months.
Johnson, who had hoped to eclipse the coveted mark in the NCAA
Outdoor Championships last June, finally did it Saturday with a
personal record vault of exactly 14 feet. That effort automatically
qualifies her for the NCAA Indoor Championships next month and was
good enough to win the elite pole vaulting competition by nearly a
foot over Washington’s Kate Soma (13 feet, 1.5 inches).
Fellow Bruins Jamie Kolar (12-9.5) and Jacqueline Nguyen
(12-5.5) finished third and seventh, respectively.
SHORT SPRINTS: Senior Melissa McBain (3000
meters), sophomore Dawn Harper (60m hurdles) and junior Jessica
Cosby (weight throw, shot put) earned provisional qualifying bids
to the NCAA Indoor Championships “¦ UCLA’s distance
medley relay team consisting of McBain, Sani Roseby, Jenna Timinski
and Alejandra Barrientos also provisionally qualified, placing
third in a time of 11:21.15 “¦ In addition to UCLA, the meet
included top-20 squads USC, Stanford, Washington and BYU … The
UCLA women’s track team will next be in action Saturday at
the Boise Indoor meet.