Ashton Eaton’s brilliance was on display for all to see over the course of the Pacific-10 Conference Championships multi-events competitions, but the weekend belonged to the Oregon women.
Sophomore Brianne Theisen won her first Pac-10 Conference title with a personal best of 5,986 points, and redshirt senior Kalindra McFadden (5,780 points) and junior Erin Funkhouser (4,881) finished second and eighth, respectively, as the Oregon women jumped out to a 19-10 lead over USC in the team title standings.
“I honestly just looked at who was second (in the final standings). I didn’t even see my score,” Theisen said. “I’m excited that Kalindra got second and Erin got eighth. I’m just happy for my teammates.”
Theisen was the Saturday leader of the heptathlon, with personal bests in the 100m hurdles (13.86, also an NCAA regional qualifying mark and the fifth-best in school history), shot put (39 feet, 0.25 inches) and 200m (24.02). With a second-place finish in the long jump and a third-place finish in the javelin, Theisen found herself with 5,087 points headed into the final event, the 800m.
The 800m had major implications that would likely have shaken down through the rest of the conference tournament, which will resume this weekend. McFadden and Funkhouser had each recorded first-day personal bests and combined to produce four personal-best marks. McFadden set yet another personal best in the javelin with a second-place throw of 134 feet, 3 inches, to find herself in third place, behind UCLA junior Nia Ali. Funkhouser recorded a long jump of 18 feet, 0.25 inches for another personal best, but she found herself in 11th place and out of scoring range with the 800m remaining.
The pressure to pull out a 1-2-8 finish could not have been greater, but Associate Director of Track and Field Dan Steele worked to put the women’s minds at ease.
“You run what you have to run,” Steele said. “They went out as a group; they all tried to help each other out and PR.”
From the gun, Funkhouser ran out to an immediate early lead, and by 300 meters Oregon was setting a fast pace while holding onto the top three spots. UCLA’s Ryann Krais joined the Ducks at the front, but Ali – and most of the rest of the field – was nowhere to be found.
McFadden was first across the finish line, in 2:13.82. Theisen finished second in 2:14.57, Krais third in 2:14.96 and Funkhouser fourth in 2:15.43. Ali finished ninth in 2:33.01, more than enough cushion to allow McFadden to leap into second place and 10th all-time in the Pac-10. Funkhouser’s time vaulted her into Pac-10 scoring range for the first time in her career.
“I didn’t expect to even see that score up there,” McFadden said. “It feels pretty good.”
The UCLA women stand in fifth place with five points, followed by Stanford (three) and Arizona (two).
Eaton leads men to 19 early points
Ashton Eaton won his second consecutive Pac-10 title, and junior Marshall Ackley set a new personal best with 7,337 points – an NCAA regional qualifying mark – as the Oregon men duplicated the heptathletes’ feat in the decathlon, scoring 19 points to take the team lead over Washington.
Eaton scored 8,091 points, and Aaron McVein finished in eighth place with 6,664 points.
Though Eaton did not set any first-day personal bests, he did eclipse his best first day ever in a decathlon, scoring 4,309 points to take a 525-point lead over teammate McVein. McVein, a junior competing in his third decathlon, was the surprise first-day runner-up with personal bests in the long jump (22 feet, 2.5 inches) and 400m (51.05). Ackley sat in fifth place with yet another personal-best decathlon first day (3,636), behind Washington freshman Jeremy Taiwo (third, 3,730) and Cal sophomore Kyle Mills-Bunje (fourth, 3,641).
The three Oregon decathletes began yesterday’s competition on a strong note. All three set personal bests in the 110m hurdles; Eaton’s time of 14.01 seconds ranks eighth on Oregon’s all-time list. A second-place finish (14.88) by Taiwo, however, shook up the leaderboard, as the UW freshman jumped to second in the standings, ahead of Ackley and McVein, respectively.
With Eaton commanding a growing lead, Ackley and Taiwo battled for the runner-up position. Both Ackley and McVein set personal bests in the discus (124-11 and 127-2, respectively), but the leaderboard remained unchanged. A last-place finish in the pole vault, however, dropped McVein to seventh place.
Ackley’s vault of 15 feet, 3 inches pushed him ahead of Taiwo by 12 points, and the twosome engaged in an entertaining contest in the javelin. Ackley set personal bests with each of his three throws, screaming louder and hyping himself up with each one. After his third throw landed 176 feet away, Taiwo answered with a throw of 176 feet, two inches to cut the deficit to eight.
That set the stage for another decisive final event in the 1,500m. UCLA’s Trent Perez took hold of the lead with 200m and never let up, but Ackley was working with Eaton behind him, boxing Taiwo in, looking to waste as much of his energy as possible.
With 500m remaining and the gaps between the three widening, Taiwo passed Ackley on the outside, but Ackley made his move with 300m remaining, passing Taiwo and sprinting to the outside to claim his points.
Ackley’s time was – what else? – a personal best of 4:25.64, clinching a 404-point improvement over his lifetime-best decathlon performance.
“They told me that it’s going to be a really close race, to put all my eggs in one basket and go for it,” an exhausted Ackley said. “So that’s what I did. We just went out there and ran to the best of our abilities.
“It’s unbelievable. I’m so excited about it.”
Oregon and Washington are trailed by Cal (5 points), Stanford (four), Arizona (three) and UCLA (two). The chances for a Pac-10 Championship three-peat look good after the decathlon.
“I am very proud of these athletes. They did a terrific job,” Steele said.
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