The Oregon women’s track and field team begins the next portion of its championship season today with a trip to Provo, Utah, for the NCAA West Regional Championships.
Oregon can no longer enjoy the comforts of home and Hayward Field this season, but will instead look to advance to the NCAA Championships, held June 7-10 in Sacramento, Calif.
This season, 18 Oregon women qualified for 11 of the 17 individual events. The regional meet starts today at 11 a.m. and continues on Saturday until 5:30 p.m.
“The regional is the qualifying procedure for the NCAA Championships, so we’ll go in ready to do what we need to do to qualify as many athletes as possible for the NCAA meet,” Oregon coach Vin Lananna said.
Oregon’s closest returnee to a West Regional championship is Elisa Reynoso, who placed third in the javelin in 2003. Oregon sends a diverse group of athletes, including Rachel Yurkovich, Rebekah Noble, Britney Henry and Amber McGown, who have shown they can challenge for titles.
Many top-ranking athletes from
the Pacific-10 Conference will join Oregon athletes in attempt to make the NCAA Championships. Three other regionals are being held in Austin, Texas, Greensboro, N.C., and Knoxville, Tenn.
Top-five finishers from each event advance to NCAAs, which makes 20 from all four regionals, and an additional six to eight athletes will be added to each event by the NCAA Championships Committee.
Noble, Oregon’s middle-distance runner is going for her first NCAA appearance.
She posted a first-place time (2 minutes, 5.81 seconds) in the Pac-10 Championships two weeks ago at Hayward Field. She also ran the 1,500 meters, where she fell back into ninth place in a time of 4:30.19.
“(This weekend) I’ll go in with a similar racing plan (in the 800) as I did at Pac-10s,” Noble said. “In some ways, this weekend will be less stressful since I won’t have to double (in the 1,500), and there’s less significance on the team points.”
The focus on one event gives her one area to focus on, she said.
“This weekend I don’t want to force it and want to run smart tactically,” Noble said. “This meet is another step in a long season that continues to get more important with NCAAs and USA Juniors around the corner.”
Participating in dual events two weeks ago came with the coaches’ intentions.
“Part of her Pac-10 double was to help her build strength for those meets,” Lananna said.
McGown, also a 1,500 participant, placed third in Pac-10s with a personal record of 4:19.00. Running behind Stanford’s Arianna Lambie (first, 4:15.65) and Washington’s Amy Lia (second, 4:18.88), McGown made a final push for first before settling into third.
“It was awesome to … watch Amber race the 1,500. She had an awesome finish and the crowd loved it,” Noble said.
Thrower Britney Henry is looking to rebound after she posted a fourth-place finish in Pac-10s. Heavily favored prior to the meet, she achieved 210-03 on her final throw, well short of winner USC’s Eva Orban’s best throw of 221-07.
Yurkovich makes her regional debut following her Pac-10 javelin championship. She launched a throw of 166-3 on her second attempt to beat Washington’s Tiffany Zahn.
Multiple Oregon athletes are making return trips to regionals – Sara Schaaf, Emily Enders, Hannah Moore, Roslyn Lundeen, Brittany Hinchcliffe, Reynoso and Lauryn Jordan – but none other than Reynoso have finished higher than fourth place in their respective events.