Neither Oregon’s Tommy Skipper nor Arizona State’s
Jackie Johnson will be able to defend their respective decathlon
and heptathlon titles at the Pac-10 Multi-Events Championships,
which will take place this weekend at Drake Stadium. Skipper, a
sophomore, had knee surgery earlier this season and will focus only
on the pole vault for the remainder of the season. And Johnson, the
defending national champion in the heptathlon, is redshirting this
season after helping lead the Arizona State women’s
basketball team to the Sweet 16. Their absence leaves both the
multi-event competitions wide open heading into the weekend. Twin
sisters Diana and Julie Pickler of Washington State have the
conference’s top two marks in the heptathlon, while Oregon
junior Andy Young is No. 1 on the Pac-10 chart in the decathlon. An
Oregon athlete has won the decathlon each of the past four years.
UCLA will have two entrants this weekend ““ sophomores
Nastassja Hall and David Murphy. Hall, who placed fifth last
season, will be looking to surpass her season-best and NCAA
provisional mark of 5,191 points. David Shortenhaus, UCLA’s
other top decathlete, will not compete due to an injury.
RECRUITING UPDATE: Rhonda Watkins, one of the top junior long
jumpers in the world, and distance runner Lindsay de la Montaigne
have signed with UCLA, women’s coach Jeanette Bolden
announced Thursday. Watkins, who also is an outstanding high
jumper, won the high school long jump competition at the Penn
Relays last weekend with a personal-best mark of 20 feet, 8 inches.
That mark would place the Trinidad and Tobago native among the
nation’s top 10 collegiate jumpers. De la Montaigne, from
Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, is one of
California’s better prep distance runners. She has a personal
best of 10 minutes, 59.22 seconds in the two-mile run. The duo will
join six other standouts who signed with UCLA last November,
including West Philadelphia Catholic High’s Nicole Leach, the
top prep hurdler in the nation.