Sophomore pole vaulter Tommy Skipper took home the silver at the USA Indoor Championships on Sunday, finishing behind former Washington vaulter Brad Walker. Walker, ranked second in the country heading into the event, cleared 18 feet
6 1/2 inches, besting Skipper’s top mark of 18-2 1/2. Walker, now competing for Nike, and Skipper met in the NCAA Indoor Championships last March. Walker topped Skipper in that meet as well, earning his second NCAA Indoor championship.
Skipper entered the event as the top-ranked collegian and tied for fifth overall in the country with 2004 Olympic silver medalist Toby Stevenson.
At the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships, junior Eric Mitchum, a returning Indoor All-American, won the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 7.81 seconds. Mitchum, who entered the Seattle meet with the nation’s fifth-fastest time, was .11 seconds off the NCAA automatic qualifying mark.
Sixty-meter sprinter Richard Del Rincon also won dash events for Oregon. The junior transfer finished the Sunday final with a 6.74 sprint, narrowly edging out Washington State’s James McSwain (6.74). Del Rincon needs to run a 6.71 to break into the nation’s top 20 times.
Finally, the Ducks’ 4×400-meter relay team, Travis Anderson, Kedar Inico, A.K. Ikwuakor and Matt Scherer, blazed to a season-best 3 minutes, 6.08 seconds time en route to a first-place finish. The Duck sprint team beat runner-up Washington by almost a full second (.98) and climbed into the national rankings (eighth).
In Brief: Skipper finishes second at national indoor event
Daily Emerald
March 1, 2005
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