NCAA Regionals
May 27, 2004 10:10 AM | General
May 27, 2004
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Five West Virginia University women’s track athletes will try to extend their seasons this weekend at the NCAA East Regional Outdoor Track and Field Championships May 28-29 in Gainesville, Fla.
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| Junior Jennifer Davis is one of five WVU athletes competing in this weekend's NCAA regional track meet in Gainesville, Fla. (S.R. Smith photo) |
Making the trip to regionals are junior Jen Kemp in the 800 meters, sophomore Susan and junior Jennifer Davis in the 3000-meter steeplechase, redshirt freshman Jessica Czaikowski in the 100-meter hurdles and junior Pam Richardson in the 400-meter hurdles.
“This is about where we knew we’d be this year,” said women’s coach Jeff Huntoon, who is minus seven-time All-American Megan Metcalfe due to a redshirt season. “We had too many freshmen coming in and it’s difficult to count on them at this level. We’re excited about the group we’ve got going and everybody is practicing well and doing exactly what we’ve planned.”
Of the five, Huntoon concedes that Kemp probably has the best shot of advancing to nationals taking place in Austin, Texas, June 8-12.
Kemp has the fifth-fastest time in the field of 33 this weekend and is coming off a second-place finish at the ECAC outdoor championships held at Yale two weekends ago.
“She’s been there before and she knows what she has to do,” said Huntoon.
Kemp’s top time of 2:07:23 achieved at ECACs is just three seconds off North Carolina’s Alice Schmidt’s 2:04:24 clocking, also done May 15. Wake Forest’s Nikeya Green, Buffalo’s Allison Lake and Florida’s Kamille Bratton have all run faster times and all are seniors.
“There isn’t going to be too many games played in this one,” said Huntoon. “This isn’t like your conference championship where you’ve got three or four good girls and someone else screwing the whole thing up and it coming down to the last 20 meters. Everybody is going from the gun. A difference between first and 15th place may be a total of two seconds.”
Huntoon is interested to see how his freshman Czaikowski holds up in the 100 hurdles. She has fared well in other big meets this season but she will be competing on the biggest stage so far this weekend in Gainesville.
“She’s had a great year,” said Huntoon. “She was second in ECAC indoors and was a finalist outdoors and did real well for us at Big East championships as a freshman. We red-shirted her last year and you can really see the difference a year makes.”
Realistically Czaikowski, 23rd out of 30 runners with a time of 13.84, is a long shot to finish in the top five to automatically qualify for nationals. The same goes for Richardson (30th out of 33 runners in the 400 hurdles) and the Davis twins (Jennifer ranked 19th and Susan ranked 21st out of 39 participants).
“The big thing for this group is to get PRs and I think all of them are in shape to do that. We’re not just hanging on; this group is ready to run,” said Huntoon.
The coach already has one in the bag so to speak in junior Tara Struyk, who has earned a spot at nationals in the 10,000. Because she has already qualified, Huntoon made the decision not to take her to Gainesville this weekend.
“We are going to have a time trial for her at the end of this week just to keep her sharp and get her mentally prepared,” said Huntoon. “10K is a lot like multi-events and decathlons: you run two good ones a year. You don’t plan on doing that every weekend.”
The team departs today for Gainesville.
Among WVU runners, Czaikowski’s event is scheduled first with the 100-hurdle prelims on Friday at 5:15 pm. Kemp will run the 800-meter preliminaries at 7 pm while Richardson will compete in the 400-meter-hurdle prelims at 7:30.
The final for the 3000-meter steeplechase is scheduled for Saturday at 8 pm.
