Too much downtime is enough to drive Nastassja Hall crazy.
That’s why the UCLA sophomore believes she has found her
niche in the heptathlon, a combination of track and field’s
seven most arduous events.
“It’s a good fit for me,” said Hall, who will
represent UCLA in the heptathlon at the Pac-10 Multi-Event
Championships this weekend in Arizona along with teammate Georgea
Richards.
“Last year was weird for me just focusing on the hurdles.
I wasn’t used to sitting around doing nothing in
practice.”
A jack-of-all-trades in high school, Hall seemed to be a good
candidate for the heptathlon last season, but the coaching staff
decided in midseason that she should focus on the long hurdles
instead.
After falling just short of a regional-qualifying mark in the
hurdles last year, Hall turned her attention back to the heptathlon
this season. Lately she has excelled, performing well in the
heptathlon at the Mt. SAC Relays and garnering personal records in
the long jump and 400-meter hurdles this past Saturday against
USC.
The long jump mark of 19 feet, 1/2 inch was especially
significant for Hall, who was starting to question herself in the
event.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself in that event because
I’ve been doing it since I was 7,” Hall said. “I
was starting to think that maybe my 19-foot jump in high school was
a fluke.”
The Pac-10 Multi-Event Championships will be Hall’s first
taste of the postseason, and she is definitely excited.
“I’m overwhelmed, actually,” she said.
Hall, the fifth-ranked heptathlete in the conference, believes
she will need to score in the 5100-point range in order to have any
shot at qualifying for the NCAA Championships in the event.
California’s Brooke Meredith is the favorite, but Hall said
she will not pay attention to the other competitors.
“As long as I don’t know how good they are, I
can’t really be scared,” she said.