Andrew Greif in the upper regions of the West Grandstand at Hayward Field opening up this thread for the women’s portion of the 2009 Pacific-10 Conference track and field championships. I’ll keep updating this as the day goes on.
UPDATE 6:54 p.m.: OK, that’s it for the first-day action from Hayward. We’ll be here tomorrow starting at noon.
Women’s 1,500m: Alex Kosinski of Oregon just won the first heat of the women’s 1,500 meters in 4:20.32. The fifth-place finisher, Oregon State’s Casey Masterson, a Sheldon High grad of Eugene, broke her school record with a 4:26 time despite nearly falling over with 50 meters left and had to catch herself. Not a pretty finish, but the time was great for her school’s standards. In the second heat Nicole Blood will advance to the final after placing in the top four in the second heat. Waiting to hear on Dana Buchanan’s final status. She was fifth in her heat, and will have to see if her time is one of the four best of the non-auto qualifiers.
Women’s long jump final: UO’s Kalindra McFadden fouled her first attempt. Then she fouled on her second attempt. She’ll have one more before finals. Conventional wisdom is to play it safe in a moment like this, but she doesn’t have the true long jumping distance to play it safe and still make it to finals. I didn’t catch her last jump, so I’m not sure if she’s going to get in. Flight two is set to begin in a few moments. The final will also be today.
Second flight, first jump for UO’s Brianne Theisen, who won the Pac-10 heptathlon last weekend here. Her leap is 19-9.75, putting her in the lead for now. Stanford’s Aranxta King’s 20-8 jump is the first to break 20 feet today. She takes the lead on her first jump of the day. UO’s Jamesha Youngblood fouled on her second attempt, the second time she’s done that today. She’s in the same boat as McFadden now, looking to get a mark; however, she is good enough (21-plus feet) that she can play it ‘safe’ and still make the final with room to spare.
Jamesha ended up winning the women’s long jump with a school record of over 21 feet, and becomes Oregon’s first LJ champ since 1994, when Kelli Blair claimed that feat. She fouled five of her six jumps. That one other? A school record, beating Julie Goodrich’s 1988 mark of 21-0.5.
“I think all my others that got scratched were probably better,” Youngblood said. “I moved back like a foot and a half just to get my jump.”
While she claimed the crowd’s support gave her too much juice and helped her foul on her first two jumps, her coach, Robert Johnson, said the wind’s gusts — her only jump had an illegal 3.5 mps wind behind her — and the crowd likely had something to do with it.
“She’s a little timid in that sense because hse’s always like, ‘No coach I don’t want the clap (Hayward’s fans rhythmic clapping) so I could see how that could scare her but hopefully after a performance like this she’ll get comfortable,” Johnson said.
Her record jump was not a thing of beauty — she was surprised she even got the record — and she had to move back a foot-and-a-half just to get on the board. In total, she moved back even further during the competition.
“I started off at like 114 (feet from the board) and I just moved it back to like 123,” she said. “It was getting a little frustrating.”
“I just thought it was a good jump to make it in to the final, I didn’t think It was the school record,” Youngblood said. “It was a surprise.”
Her technique during the jump didn’t give Johnson the impression it was that far, either.
”It looked like a 20-foot-4, 20-foot-5,” Johnson said. She has the potential, he said for a 22-foot jump.
“Sky’s the limit,” he said. “I wouldn’t rule it out.”
Women’s 100m hurdles: Lyndsay Pearson of Oregon finished in 14.00 seconds but won’t be making the final after her time was 12th overall. Kimyon Broom of Cal was first overall in 13.03, but the wind was a non-legal 3.3 meters per second. The final for that race is Sunday at 1:35 p.m.
Women’s 800m: Interesting that Oregon is running multi-event 8th place finisher Erin Funkhouser in the first heat of this race. She’s not an 800m runner, by far, but she held in the back of the six-runner pack for much of the first lap. Give her some credit, though, she finished in fourth after a runner dropped out, in 2:15.04. Second heat coming.
In the second, Krishna Curry won with 2:07.35, the best overall time of the day, and in the third heat Zoe Buckman of Oregon won in 2:08.75. Oregon will also have Alex Kosinski in the final after she finished seventh overall in 2:08.06.
Women’s shot put final: It wasn’t a surprise who won this one. Sarah Stevens took her third conference title in the shot put with a throw of 56-10 on her second attempt, beating the field by more than five feet.
Oregon grabbed three points when Rita Santibanez finished sixth after her first throw of 45-5.25.
Women’s javelin final: Oregon senior Rachel Yurkovich, the three-time defending Pac-10 champ and the reigning NCAA champion, started off her prelim round with a throw of 180-3. Her second throw was a non-factor, but on her third, she uncorked a school, conference and meet record throw of 191-2, the furthest throw in the nation this year. That throw puts her in the top 23 in the world this year. We’ll get her reaction afterward, but you can imagine the relief off her back now that she got it.
She is the fifth woman athlete in Pac-10 history to win four titles in one event, and this is the second time it has happened in the javelin.
Ashley McCrea of Oregon threw 164-0 on her sixth and final attempt to move her into third place. The Ducks expected her to be in that spot coming in according to the form charts. That’s a good development for the Oregon women.
Both throwers called their best throws of the day “easy.”
“When you try too hard you get worse throws,” said McCrea, who downplayed the effect the headwind had on the competition.
Post-win Yurkovich, the senior from Newberg, Ore., had time to contemplate what it meant to be a four-time winner in the event. In the present, she was even happier that her team was finally in a race for a Pac-10 title after three years of being also-rans at the conference meet.
“It feels like there is a purpose,” Yurkovich said. “If you don’t do your job you may or may not be in the race anymore.”
The win was also about getting back to the simple things. She used her old, standby javelin on the throw, the one she said she’s thrown nearly all her personal bests with. Then she relaxed and made her best throw of her life look, and feel, “easy.”
“The official out there said, ‘That looked easy you should do that all the time and not make it look so hard,’” Yurkovich joked.
The senior’s dominance at the conference level, as was shown earlier, is nearly unprecedented. From her entrance on the scene as a freshman she has ruled the javelin ranks. She goes out similarly on top.
“It means a lot also to go out with a bang,” she said. ” To know that I can still be on top.
“I still want more.”
Women’s steeplechase final: Oregon managed to grab three points with Claire Michel’s sixth-place finish in 10:27.29, but Marie Lawrence of Washington ran free of everybody in the 20-runner field, winning going away in 9:54.13, nearly 20 seconds faster than anybody else. She was so far ahead, in fact, that few realized she even won until she casually stepped off the track, catching even the meet announced by slight surprise.
Women’s 400m hurdles: This is the only event the Oregon women do not have a regional qualifier in. Then again, it’s not that surprising considering the best runner for the women in the event, senior Leah Worthen, is a converted 400m runner. She didn’t come to Oregon expecting to hurdle…in fact she hadn’t her entire life before her junior year. She finished fourth in her heat, and UPDATE gets into the final in eighth. She’ll score Oregon a surprise point tomorrow by virtue of just being in the race.
UPDATE again: Lyndsay Pearson’s time of 1:00.36 in the 400m hurdles is a regional qualifier, (she’s sixth overall in the event and makes the final) and gives the Ducks their first regional qualifier in the event. Oregon now has one in each event.
Women’s 200m dash: Charonda Williams of ASU had the fastest time of the day with a 23.21 in the second heat. Cherrelle Garrett of Cal won the first heat in a time of 23.63, the second-fastest time of the day. Keshia Baker of Oregon is the only Duck in the final tomorrow with her fourth-fastest time of 23.53 seconds.
Women’s 10,000m: Mattie Bridgmon of Oregon takes fifth place in the race, but it was a runaway for Washington’s Anita Campbell and Stanford’s team.
Campbell won in 34:13.27, outdistancing second place by more than one minute. She had double-lapped several runners in the race by the end, creating an interesting wait to see who came in second and third.
Stanford runners took second, third, fourth and eighth in the race, getting 20 points even without scoring the race’s top runner. Kate Niehaus was second, Georgia Griffin third, and Stephanie Marcy fourth for the Cardinal. That’s a big reason why the Cardinal went from being behind 54-38 to UO an event ago to now being behind 67-58. Amazing what depth will do for you.
Women’s high jump: Inika McPherson of Cal won with a height of 5-11.25, beating Elizabeth Patterson of Arizona’s 5-10 mark. Jasmin Day of Arizona was third in 5-8.75 on misses, beating Oregon’s Jasmine Kelly, who also did 5-8.75.
Good job with the posts. Beautiful day at Hayward. Do you know what happened to the SC runner at the end of the 3rd heat of the women’s 800m? She appeared to be in a great deal of pain while being attended to by Oregon trainers on the infield, delaying the start of the mens 800M. I found it interesting that No SC coaches or trainers were there with her until the EMT’s came to wheel her away. Any word on this runner?
I don’t have any word on her. The media services people here are in the dark as much as anybody, as is the USC official.