TRACK & FIELD — The Tritons hosted their annual
Divisional Challenge on April 5, winning both the men’s and women’s team
titles, only the second time all season that both teams took first at the same
meet. While the women breezed to their competition’s title with an 89-point
margin of victory, the day’s most exciting news was the come-from-behind
victory of the men, who narrowly edged out Claremont-Mudd-Scripps by a score of
194-193.
The Divisional Challenge is aptly named for the format of
the competition levels at the meet. Each year there is supposed to be one team
from a Division-I school, a Division-II school, a Division-III school, a
community college and a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics
school. UC Riverside, the Division-I representative, dropped out of the race
last week, leaving UCSD to face off as the top competitor versus
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (Division III),
Nazarene University (NAIA).
After taking on some of the West Coast’s leading Division-I schools
at the previous Cal/Nevada and All-Cal Championship meets, the Tritons then had
to deal with facing a relatively lower level of competition, along with no
longer being able to hide under the guise of the underdog team.
“At these meets, when we’re the top team, nothing really
changes because you always push yourself as hard as you can for every race,”
junior hurdler Jennifer Albertson said. “We have to know that there will always
be people gunning for us. If you always assume that you’re going to win it
becomes hard to improve; that is when you have to look at your own personal
accomplishments and do better than you did the previous time, regardless of who
your competition is.”
The Triton men have yet to post any national provisional
marks that would give them direct qualifiers for the National Championship in
late May, but they have started to place higher and higher in meets. As long as
the team can overcome some recent minor injuries, it should take a lot of
momentum into the playoffs. After lingering around first place for the majority
of the meet, it looked as though the men would have to settle for second before
a few late victories pushed them just past the competition.
In only his second meet this season, sophomore jumper Casey
Ryan looked in mid-season form by winning the high jump with a 2.04-meter leap,
just ahead of fellow Triton Stephen Johnson’s mark of 1.99 meters. Sophomore
thrower Fred Cook’s toss of 14.62 meters in the shot put was more than a whole
meter ahead of the second-place finisher from Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and easily
earned him a top finish. Also contributing first-place points were senior
hurdler Khalil Hooper in the 110-meter hurdles and junior distance runner Jake
LeVieux in the 800 meter.
The top finish for the men was made even more impressive by
the fact that many Tritons were either shelved by recent injuries or forced to
play through them.
“We had a lot of sick
and injured today,” men’s coach Tony Salerno said. “Coming out of Cal/Nevada we
had to rest some people and had to sit some people to nurse some injuries. We
knew that
a tough team coming into today, they are one of the better programs in Division
III, that’s why we always invite them here.”
The UCSD women, who have become somewhat accustomed to their
recent streak of dominance, had no problems blowing away their competition at
the Divisional Challenge, wracking up victories in almost all events and
breaking three school records in the process.
The 4×100 relay team of senior Kayliegh Knudson, junior
Katie Skorupa, sophomore Christine Merrill and freshman Kelly Fogarty ran the
event in 47 seconds flat to set the all-time UCSD record by .14 seconds. After
setting the school record in the pole vault at last week’s Cal/Nevada meet,
senior Christina Sloyer improved her own all-time record by clearing 3.8 meters
for first place at the meet and a national provisional mark. The third school
record to fall on Saturday was in the 400-meter hurdles, where sophomore Anna
Lee McGregor ran a 56.51.
The Tritons will next travel on April 10 for the prestigious
three-day UCLA Rafer Johnson/Jackie Joyner Kersey Invitational in Los Angeles,
the first major meet in a stretch of three straight weeks of intense
competition leading up to the CCAA Conference finals that begin on May 1.
