In a meet expected to go to the team with the most sprinting prowess, the early leader has capitalized on points from other parts of the track — and a little home-field advantage.
The Oregon men’s track and field team continued its Cinderella run atop the standings Thursday at the 2001 NCAA Track and Field Championships at Hayward Field. The Ducks remained the national leader for the second day in a row.
Santiago Lorenzo’s unexpected win in the decathlon in the final event, coupled with Billy Pappas’ eighth-place finish and 16 points from Wednesday, pushed the Oregon total to 27 points, 11 ahead of its nearest competitor.
“We’ve had a wonderful first two days,” Oregon head coach Martin Smith said. “When you take a step back and look at it, we have two national champions in Santiago Lorenzo and John Steigeler. And we’ve also had a number of other athletes have very impressive performances — Jason Hartmann in the 10,000, Billy Pappas in the decathlon and Micah Harris in the hurdles. We’ve just had two days of great individual and team effort.”
Don’t hold your breath waiting for an Oregon win, though. Sprinting powers Tennessee and Texas Christian have qualified all their key athletes out of preliminaries and look forward to finals on the track tomorrow.
“We have everyone we expected to qualify for tomorrow and got bonus points in the long jump,” Texas Christian head coach Monte Stratton said. “So far, so good.”
Both schools qualified three athletes into the 100-meter semifinals, setting up a titanic battle in today’s 4×100 relay final. Tennessee has the top two 100-meter marks with Leonard Scott and Justin Gatlin both nearing the 10-second barrier.
In Thursday’s other finals, Mississippi’s Savante Stringfellow leapt the second-farthest jump in the world this year en route to a victory in the long jump. The senior set himself away from the field with a jump of 27 feet, 6 3/4 inches.
“I wanted to end the competition early,” Stringfellow said. “This was my last college meet. This was a blessing for me and my coaches and parents.”
Georgia’s Andras Haklits turned in a gutsy effort in winning the hammer throw. The Szentpeterfa, Hungary, native tossed the hammer 247-8 with a bulging disc and bone fragments in his lower back.
“I’m happy to win it, but it was not a great throw,” Haklits said. “I only started to practice two weeks ago, and I didn’t feel confident in the ring.”
Haklits goes into surgery today in Athens, Georgia, to repair his lower back.
Weber State’s Charles Clinger emerged from a competitive pack of high jumpers to claim top honors. Clinger won a jump-off against fellow Utah native David Hoffman of Utah State after both jumpers cleared 7-6 1/2.
“The competition is a lot harder than I thought it would be,” Clinger said. “I’m not used to the heat and I didn’t feel fresh, so I was quite pleased with how I jumped under the conditions.”
In other qualifying preliminaries, favorites Bryan Berryhill of Colorado State and Eluid Njubi of Texas Christian advanced in the 1,500 meters without trouble, each winning his respective heat. Stanford’s Gabe Jennings atoned for a poor performance in the 800 meters by qualifying in the 1,500.
Alabama’s No. 2-ranked David Kimani faltered and missed qualifying by less than a second.
Auburn’s Avard Moncur enters the 400 meters as the top seed. Louisiana State’s Alleyne Franquice ran the second-fastest 400 meters and came back an hour later to anchor the Tigers’ top-seeded 4×400 relay team, which qualified for finals in a time of 3:01.6.
Around the Pacific-10 Conference, Southern California moved up the scoring column with Norberth Norvath’s third-place finish in the hammer throw. The Trojans are tied for second with 16 points. California is tied for 15th with four points, while Washington has one.
Finals action continues today with the discus, 400 hurdles, 800 meters and 5,000 meters.