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2004
NCAA OUTDOOR TRACK & FIELD CHAMPIONSHIPS by Parker Morse
Alicia Craig won her second consecutive 10,000m title at tonight's NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships with a carbon copy of last year's race. "Two mile run, two mile workout, two mile race," was how the Stanford sophomore characterized her 33:58.27 victory in humid conditions. While Craig was on her initial "run," BYU junior Laura Turner (seventh, 34:56.87) built a significant lead. Moving to the front within a lap of the start, Turner built a lead as large as 10 seconds by two miles, but by 4,000m that lead was already dwindling. Led by Auburn's Angela Homan (sixth, 34:40.12) and NC State's Kristin Price (DNF), the pack overtook Turner not long after 5K. When the pack reached Turner, Florida State's Vicky Gill (second, 34:02.31,) who had dominated the early going last year, moved to the front. Craig, Jamie Krzyminski of Michigan State (third, 34:02.40) and Homan covered the move and pulled away from the pack, but Homan had been leading the pursuit for too long and lacked the spark to keep up with Gill's new pace. Melissa Gulli of Texas A&M (fifth, 34:29.77) and Emily Kroshus of Princeton (4th, 34:21.20) passed Homan and trailed the pack of three. Over the next six laps, Kroshus passed Gulli and gradually moved up on Gill, Krzyminski and Craig, catching them just before 8K. Gill looked unaffected by her time in the lead, but Craig, just behind, was only now waking up from her five-mile nap, and Kroshus had been moving slightly faster for several laps as she made up ground. When Kroshus, after checking over her shoulder to see where Gulli was, pushed up to contest the lead with Gill in the twenty-first lap, Craig made her move. As a long-distance runner in what can sometimes be a middle-distance atmosphere at Stanford, Craig appears to have absorbed the principle that you only get one move, so it had better be a good one. She demolished the pack by knocking the pace from 82 seconds per lap to 72. Krzyminski attempted to cover the move, but was unable to stay with Craig as long as 100 meters. Craig was able to "sit back" with a series of 77-second laps to run her last mile in 5:03. Gill, maintaining her own ferocious pace, caught Krzyminski again with two laps to go, and the two dueled in the last lap, Gill barely coming out ahead, taking second by .09. Kroshus held off a fast-closing Gulli for fourth. "I didn't want to get overconfident and not expect that they could come back on me," said Craig afterward. "I just kept on going... I wanted to go in with the same approach [as last year], to be patient and have a big kick in the last mile. I could tell that people were tempted to make a move, so I wanted to try and catch them off-guard. I put in a surge that was kind of hard to cover." Also on tonight's schedule were qualifying rounds in the 800m, 1,500m, and steeplechase. Defending champion Alice Schmidt of North Carolina advanced in the women's 800m by winning her heat with a pedestrian 2:06.03, while indoor champion Nicole Cook of Tennessee was the primary casualty of the rounds. Schmidt described the process of selecting a nine-woman final from 28 entrants as "cutthroat." "I would have liked three rounds [rather than two] because it plays to my strength," explained Schmidt. The women ran four heats of seven, advancing each heat's winner plus the next five fastest times. Cook's teammate Kameisha Bennett posted the fastest qualifier, running 2:03.83 in the first heat and leading in Nicole Petty of Nevada-Reno and Aneita Denton of Arkansas; Kamille Bratton of Florida was the first non-qualifier from that heat. "I just wanted to get out and make a mark today," explained Bennett. "I want to continue and run another good race on Saturday." Only Brooke Patterson of Kentucky followed Beata Rudzinska in from the second heat, both running under 2:06 (2:05.52 and 2:05.68, respectively.) Neisha Bernard-Thomas of LSU won the third heat in 2:04.21, the second-fastest qualifier, and pulled along Nikeya Greene of Wake Forest and Carlene Robinson of Illinois. Schmidt's 2:06.03 was not only the slowest heat winner, it was only the seventh of the nine advancing times. "You wouldn't know from my time, but I was trying to run fast. When we went through a little slow at the 400, I wanted to press down a little bit and make sure I was out there [away from the pack.]" Tiffany McWilliams of Mississippi State posted a front-running 4:11.64 to dominate 1,500m qualifying for women. Stanford freshman Arianna Lambie followed McWilliams in the first heat, then faded, and finished just over a second outside the time needed to advance. Wisconsin's Hilary Edmondson led the non-McWilliams qualifiers in the first heat, breaking away from Kerry Meagher of Notre Dame and UNC's Erin Donohue. Marina Muncan's 4:14.91 won the other 1,500m heat and was the second-fastest mark. Muncan moved to the front two-thirds of the way through the race and established a gap which held to the finish; Treniere Clement of Georgetown followed less than a second later (4:15.78) with Lindsey Gallo of Michigan and Iryna Vashchuk of USC the other automatic qualifiers from the second heat. There were no surprises in the women's steeplechase as the four favorites (Brianna Shook of Toledo, Ida Nilsson of Northern Arizona, Michaela Mannova and Kassi Andersen, both of BYU) all safely advanced. Shook posted the fastest qualifying time with her front-running 10:05.18 in the first of two heats. Andersen led the pursuit conservatively, but was nipped by Nebraska's Ann Gaffigan at the line. The second heat ran together much longer, leading to slower times; Nilsson and Mannova led the heat, with Jennifer Donovan of Boston College a close third. The finals of all three events will all be run on Saturday, along with the 5,000m final. (Posted June 11, 2004)
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