Although the Men of Oregon fell short of a desired top-four finish at last week’s NCAA Outdoor Championships, they did not come away empty-handed.
The Ducks left Sacramento State’s Hornet Stadium with five All-American honors, three top-five individual finishes and crowned a national champion in pole vaulter Tommy Skipper.
As the 2005 indoor NCAA winner and holder of the nation’s top mark this season at 19 feet, Skipper entered as the favorite. As usual, the junior from Sandy delivered.
Skipper ducked the first four heights before clearing his opening height of 18-0 1/2 with his first attempt. The conversion left him with two remaining opponents, defending national champion Robison Pratt of BYU and UCLA’s Mike Landers.
After passing the next height of 18-2 1/2 which Landers missed, Skipper and Pratt dueled at 18-4 1/2. Skipper cleared this with his second attempt of the day. Pratt failed his first two tries before passing to 18-6 1/2, which he also missed. Skipper then cleared 18-8 1/4 on his first attempt.
With his second outdoor NCAA title now in his back pocket, Skipper tried for a new personal best at 19-2 1/4 but failed all three attempts. He became Oregon’s 10th athlete to win multiple national titles.
Skipper highlighted the final day of competition which saw the Ducks finish 12th in the field of 65 scoring teams. They tied with Virginia Tech with 23 points. As was seen at the Pacific-10 Conference Championships, Oregon ended fewer than seven points shy of USC (26) who tied for ninth. Florida State scored 67 points en route to the school’s first outdoor national title.
Also earning All-American honors Saturday was Oregon’s 4×400-meter relay of Travis Anderson, Matt Scherer, Akobundu Ikwuakor and Jordan Kent. The foursome took sixth in the finals at three minutes, 4.85 seconds. It gave the Ducks three team points.
Scherer added four of his own in the 400. The senior Pac-10 Champion entered the finals after winning his preliminary heat on Wednesday. He took fifth on Saturday with a time of 45.41. Scherer finished less than a second behind first-place finisher Xavier Carter of LSU (44.53).
On Friday, Oregon’s three-time Pac-10 Champion and 2006 Regionals winner Eric Mitchum ran in the final round of the 110-meter hurdles. The senior co-team captain ended his collegiate career with his third top-five finish at Nationals; a fifth-place effort of 13.58.
Individually, Kent and Ikwuakor ended their NCAA run in semifinals action Friday. They did so in the 200 and 400 hurdles, respectively.
In the 400 hurdles, Ikwuakor took 16th with a time of 51.87, his fourth-fastest this season.
Kent missed advancing to the finals in the 200 by eight-hundredths of a second. He took eighth in his heat and 13th in the field.
The junior from Eugene helped the 4×100 relay earn All-American honors that same day alongside Richard Del Rincon, Derrick Jones and Scherer. Kent crossed the finish line seventh, where the Ducks ended at 39.48. The Pac-10 Champions clocked the fifth-fastest time in school history. It was three-hundredths of a second slower than their season best (39.45).
With coach Vin Lananna’s first outdoor season with Oregon now in the books, select Duck athletes have the USA Outdoor Championships and Junior National Championships too look forward to. They’re slated for June 22-25 in Indianapolis.