The Oregon women continued to stake their claim for what could be an impressive showing at the NCAA Track and Field Championships in two weeks after automatically qualifying 11 athletes in 12 events during the weekend’s NCAA West Regional championships.
Oregon’s Jamesha Youngblood, who qualified in both the long jump (fourth) Friday and triple jump (third) Saturday, joins Brianne Theisen as the only women who could compete in more than one event. Theisen automatically qualified in the heptathlon weeks ago – it isn’t contested at the regional level – but came out of nowhere to secure a fourth-place finish in 13.47 seconds in the 100-meter hurdles and improved by .7 seconds on her previous personal best to run school record times in both the Friday prelims and Saturday final.
Still, she might only concentrate on the heptathlon at the national championships, she said.
“The coaches will have a tough decision to make,” she said. “I don’t know yet what I will be competing in.”
The women’s combined performances were another sign in the team’s late-season surge after a blowout team win at the Pacific-10 Conference meet two weeks ago.
Before the meet started, associated head coach Dan Steele told the women he wanted to take “an army” of athletes to the NCAA Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., in two weeks, and other than a bad handoff on the women’s 4×100-meter team, he couldn’t have asked for more from them.
On the first day, Oregon got a win by Melissa Gergel in the pole vault that was a quarter-inch off her personal best of 14 feet, 2 inches, which she set two weeks ago.
Gergel cleared her second height on her third and final attempt, then cleared the winning height of 14-1.75 on her third attempt, as well.
“I’d prefer not to make a habit of that (third-attempt conversions), but I’ll take it,” Gergel said.
Nicole Blood won her first West Regionals title in the 5,000 meters in 16:19.14 on Friday.
Youngblood jumped 21-0 on her second jump of the afternoon in the long jump, and passed on her final four jumps, content with watching others try to match it. They couldn’t, and she made her first nationals meet of her two-year career at Oregon. She used a similarly controlled effort Saturday in the triple jump, going for a top-five finish, not the win.
“Fifth, first, second, third, fourth; it’s all first,” Youngblood said.
While she enjoyed a comfortable berth to nationals, former walk-on senior discus thrower Lucy Cridland sent cheers through a thinning Hayward Field crowd when she improved four inches on her final throw to move into fifth place. The event was the final one of Friday evening, and a sparse crowd was still on hand to watch her make her first nationals trip.
“Four inches is not a lot,” said a crying Cridland. “I pulled it together for my season; actually I pulled it all together for all four years.”
The start of Saturday’s meet did not equal Friday’s finish, however.
A handoff between Mandy White and Amber Purvis between the first and second legs of the 4x100m relay that was outside of the allowable zone cost the team a chance at nationals despite finishing third.
Steele afterward criticized the regional format, which could be gone next year or exist in two meets instead of four, for causing a nationals-caliber team to jump through one last hoop before nationals, a loop the Ducks had trouble with.
“That’s a good example of what’s broken with the regional system,” Steele said. “Now we need to figure out how to get a trophy without them.”
It was also one of the few missteps of the day by Oregon.
“It was very disappointing,” he said.
Senior Rachel Yurkovich won her fourth consecutive regional title in the javelin with a mark of 188-8, 21 feet ahead of second place. Teammate Ashley McCrea, who has battled a knee injury in her plant foot for more than a year, Yurkovich said, finished eighth after collapsing on her second throw of the meet. She is nearly guaranteed to make the NCAA meet, however, by virtue of her season’s best throw that ranks 12th nationally and is eligible for one of the few wild card exceptions to be granted entry to the meet this week.
Keshia Baker made her return trip to the NCAA Championships in the 400 meters look easy. Comfortably running to the lead with 150 meters to go out of lane six, Baker easily reeled in San Diego State’s Nicole Stone down the homestretch with the help of the crowd. She won in 52.49 seconds, her second-best time of her life.
“I went straight from 53 (seconds) to 51. I’d never run a 52 before,” said Baker, referencing her two-second personal best set two weeks ago. “I was just working on some things at this meet to prepare for nationals.”

Zoe Buckman was second in the 800 meters, Claire Michel qualified in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and Alex Kosinski was fifth in the 1,500 meters in another slow race not unlike the Pac-10 1,500 meters final, after leading the race against her will for most the race from the inside.
“Everyone was pretty close and everyone could have made it,” Kosinski said.
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