Feb. 27, 2010
TEMPE – The Arizona State University track and field team opened competition at the 2010 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF) Indoor Track & Field Championships at Dempsey Indoor in Seattle, Wash., on Friday night with two NCAA automatic qualifiers, four provisional qualifiers and 12 marks that rank among the Top 10 all-time best in program history. The duo of true freshmen Constance Ezugha and Christabel Nettey both recorded jumps of over 21 feet to earn automatic berths into the NCAA meet next month and earn 18 points for the Sun Devil women to lead the way at Washington.
In the team standings, the ASU women currently stand second through six scored evets with 36 points while Stanford leads with 56 and Oregon is third with 31. On the men’s side, UCLA is the overall leader with 52.5 points and is followed by Stanford (39) and Washington (35) while the Sun Devils are sixth with 15 points.
The only two freshmen in the nation to have either automatically or provisionally qualified in the long jump, both Ezugha and Nettey made sure to earn a berth in their first national meet as they took the Top 2 spots in the meet and currently rank fourth and sixth in the nation, respectively. Ezugha won the meet with a leap of 6.45m (21-02.00) while Nettey, who had already automatically qualified, was second at 6.42m (21-00.75). The duo now ranks third and tied for fourth, respectively, on the ASU all-time lists.
Two other newcomer, including one freshman, also posted top marks a Keia Pinnick and Samantha Henderson finished third and fourth in the pentathlon. Pinnick, a true freshman, scored 3,753 points to provisionally qualify for nationals with the school’s second-best total of all-time while Henderson, a junior, scored 3,716 points, which is nine points shy of the provisional standard, but does rank third all-time at ASU.
One other woman scored for the team while also recording a provisional standard as Ali Kielty took fourth in the 5,000m run in 16:33.69. In the same race, Lindsay Prescott ran 16:50.91 to finish 10th while recording the ninth-best time in school history. In the men’s 5,000m run, Jeff Helmer scored by placing seventh in 14:05.08 to provisionally qualify for nationals while his two teammates in the race, Ben Engelhardt (14th) and Alonso Contreras (16th) ran the eighth (14:24.54) and 10th (14:28.46) times in program history, respectively,
The final provisional qualifier attained on the day came from the men’s distance medley relay of Nectaly Barbosa, Justin Kremer, Mason McHenry and Brandon Bethke, who took second with a school-record run of 9:31.34, just missing the automatic qualifying time of 9:30.00. Their time beat out the previous record of 9:32.49 that Kremer and Barbosa ran with Joey Heller and Kyle Alcorn at the 2008 NCAA Championships, where they placed second.
In final scored events in the field, three men and one woman added points to the team’s total, including Ashley Lampley in the women’s weight throw. Lampley recorded a personal-best toss of 16.61m (54-06.00) to place seventh overall in the event while also posting the seventh-best throw in school history. Also in the weight, Jordan Clarke took fourth for the men as his toss of 18.67m (61-03.00) equalled his personal-best, which stands as the fifth-best in ASU history. Michael Stokes finished eighth in the long jump (7.00m/22-11.75) and Joe Fazio tied for seventh in the pole vault (4.96m/16-03.25) to round out the scoring for the men.
Sun Devils also advanced in several preliminary rounds, including the women’s 60m hurdles and the men’s 60m dash. For the women, Jasmine Chaney qualified for the final with the second-best time in the field at 8.47 (fifth-best all-time at ASU) while Nettey was sixth overall in 8.54. For the men, Lawrence Trice and Ryan Milus tied for the top time by running 6.79 while Ray Miller also advanced to the final by running 6.85.
In the men’s heptathlon, Jamie Sandys stands ninth overall through the first four events of the seven-event competition as he has scored 2,703 points. Jeremy Marcinko has scored 2,536 points, which stands 16th overall. The final three events of the heptathlon will be held on Saturday.
Action at the MPSF Championships concludes in Seattle on Saturday.