May 25, 2007
EUGENE, Ore. - The first of two days of competition at the NCAA West Region Championships came to a close Friday night at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., with one member of the Arizona State University track and field team claiming a title and four total Sun Devils punching their tickets to the national meet in two weeks.
In the team standings of the scored competition, the ASU women, ranked No. 1 nationally, hold a slight lead over the field with 25 points through five events with UCLA in second (22 points), Stanford and Oregon are tied for third with 20 points and California is fifth with 13 points. On the men's side, the Sun Devils are in a tie for sixth place with CS Northridge as both have accumulated eight points through four events. Oregon leads the way with 37 points while Washington (26), UCLA (17.5), Stanford (15.5) and Boise State (11) round out the Top 5.
The field events provided the highest placements for the Sun Devils as Jessica Pressley won the shot put with a toss of 17.84m while Sarah Stevens was just behind in her second place with a mark of 17.69m. The 1-2 finish was the second in a row for the duo after Stevens won the Pac-10 title two weeks ago and Pressley was second. ASU also got points from the women's 5,000m run as Ali Kielty finished fifth in 16:33.59 while Jenna Kingma was sixth at 16:34.30. Stevens, Pressley and Kielty automatically have qualified for the NCAA Championships while Kingma will now have to await word from the NCAA to see if she is an at-large selection.
For the men, Matt Turner had an interesting day in the long jump as the top-ranked male in the west needed a big third-round jump to reach the finals. After a short jump and a foul left him in 12th place, Turner lept to 7.79m to take the lead and then, on his next jump, he jumped to 7.93m (26-00.25) which would be second by one centimeter. His leap is the seventh-best mark in school history (despite the 3.9 tailwind that aided him) and ranks second in the nation this year.
Several other Sun Devils advanced to the finals of their respective events. On the women's side, Bridgette Williams ran 54.50 to finish eighth in the 400m dash while Latosha Wallace clocked in at 57.71 in the 400m hurdles, which ranked second on the day. Jacquelyn Johnson ran the sixth-fastest time on the day in the 100m hurdles at 13.49.
On the men's side, Jimmie Gordon clocked in at 47.11 in the 400m dash to place third overall after he anchored the 4x100m relay of Marquis Profit, Kelvin Love and Justin Kremer to a time of 40.75, the sixth-best time on the day.
The Sun Devils will complete their stay in Eugene on Saturday with the finals of several events with the Top 5 advancing to the NCAA Championships on June 6-9 in Sacramento, Calif.