Caleb Henley tied his own Charlotte pole vault mark at Auburn this weekend. |
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Charlotte Splits Up and Competes at Auburn and Oregon This Weekend
April 21, 2007
Auburn, Ala. & Eugene, Ore. - The Charlotte 49ers track and field teams split up and competed at Auburn and Oregon Invitationals this weekend. The split squads got a break from recent bad weather, posting a myriad of season-best marks for the majority of competitors.
"The meets at Auburn and Oregon went great and made up for some missed oppotunities to record improved marks in the last couple of weeks due to adverse weather conditions," said Niners head track and field coach Bob Olesen. "Many people had season's and lifetime bests with several regional qualifying marks and in addition to this we had a few very near misses with respect to regional qualifying so we expect those to come through at the conference meet."
At Auburn, Sophomore Aja Jackson won the 800m dash, with a school-record time of 2:09.58 in a start-to-finish-led race. She qualifies for NCAA Regionals with the result.
The 4x400m relay team finished second overall with a 3:43.86-second mark in the event, a season-best time for Charlotte this season, and less than two seconds from a regional qualifying time.
Shareese Woods posted a pair of times, including her first 200m run of the outdoor season. She bested her own school-record time in the 100m, with a time of 11.33 seconds in the short dash. THat result is currently second in the United States. She also posted a 23.12 second time in her first 200m outdoor run of the season. That time placed her second in the event, and second by one-hundredth of a second for her own school-record. Both 100m and 200m times qualify for the NCAA regionals, but also are USA Championship "A" qualifying and 2008 Olympic Trials "B" standard qualifying.
Angel Moore shaved seven-tenths of a second off her best 400m time of the season. She finished third overall in the event with a time of 55.12-seconds in the 400m dash. Teammate Karmel Stapleton had a lifetime-best mark as well of 58.22 in the 400m dash.
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The top collegiate finisher for Charlotte was Ashley Wiley in the hammer throw, besting the school record with a toss of 47.77m in that event.
Sophomore Pat Springs bested her career-long mark in the long jump with a result of 6.26m and a third-place finish at the meet, but tops among college performers. She was 2 cm from the school record. She also ran a 14.10-second time in the 100m hurdle preliminaries.
Senior Sharonda Johnson continue to excel in the triple jump. She tied her season-best mark of 12.81m, which was second to fellow All-AMerican Michelle Vaughn of Auburn and well pas tthe regional qualifying mark in that event.
The men's relay team shaved a tenth of a second in the 4x100m dash time, down to 41.10 seconds.
Caleb Henley matched his school-record bar in the pole vault, clearing 4.90m in that event.
LaMarcus Outing finished second in the long jump, out-distancing his best mark of his career, with a 7.33m result. He was the top collegiate finisher and was one cm short of a regional qualifying mark.
Lloyd LeBlanc posted a time of 49.08 seconds in the 400m dash, which was his best run in his career.
Montray Gilchrist also posted a career-best time of 14.31 in the 100m hurdles. His time was a hudredth of a second from a reginoal qualifying time in the event.
Freshman Danielle Brown broke her personal best in the triple jump with an 11.62m leap.
Distance runners completed at the Oregon Invitational.
Senior Jane Daniels ran a lifetime-best and regional-qualifying time of 16:44.21 in the 5000m run. It was the third-best result in school-history behind All-Americans Cassie Ficken and Molly Kerin.
Freshman Aaron Kauffman qualified for the USA Junior National Championships with an 800m time of 1:52.94, good enough for fifth place in Niners history.
Chase Eckard was nearly four seconds better than his season-low mark in the 1,500m run, turning in a result of 3:50.78 in that distance event. The result was the third-best in school history.
Ryan Jank and Adu Dentamo ran their first 5,000m event of 2007 and logged person-best times. Jank finished at 14:30.10, while Dentamo registered a time of 14:36.84.
Matt Hipps ran his and Charlotte's first 10,000m run of the 2007 outdoor season, and turned in a 32:26.28 time.
"We've set ourselves up pretty well for A-10 seeding purposes and look strong on both the men's and women's ranking lists," said Olesen. "Our next meet is the championship as we will rest up next weekend to prepare. Many other A-10 teams will compete next weekend which will likely shift a few things on the rankings but that's fine we'll use the time to prepare and be ready to defend our championships."
Charlotte will defend their men's and women's titles as it hosts the Atlantic 10 Outdoor Track and Field Championships on May 5 and 6.
