TUCSON, Ariz. “”mdash; There were injuries. Maybe even a few
unexpected setbacks.
But probably the toughest challenge the UCLA women’s track
and field team faced in defending its Pac-10 Championship title was
settling on a suitable victory dance.
The second-ranked Bruins, who huddled around coach Jeanette
Bolden for 15 minutes after trying to one-up each other in an
impromptu dance-off, looked every bit the part of national title
contender Saturday evening.
A superb performance from the UCLA sprints corps helped the
squad overcome the absence of three of its brightest stars to
capture its eighth-straight conference crown.
“We have such a variety of great athletes that even
missing a few, we’re still a great team,” junior
sprinter Monique Henderson said. “It’s a tradition for
us to win the Pac-10 title. It shows our season is headed in the
right direction.”
Already without All-Americans Lena Nilsson and Renee Williams,
both of whom will miss the rest of the season due to injury, UCLA
took another hit when the coaching staff decided to leave sophomore
high jumper Sheena Gordon at home.
But if the rest of the conference thought this might have been
their chance to prey on a weakened Bruin squad, they were clearly
mistaken. Henderson, Sheena Johnson and Sani Roseby each set the
track afire as UCLA won six of the seven sprint events and seized
control of the meet.
“Sometimes adversity brings out the best in people,”
Bolden said. “This team is very strong, and it has worked
really hard. I didn’t have any doubts.”
Languishing in fourth place after a sluggish start in the field
events, UCLA showed immediate signs of life on the track Saturday
afternoon.
The Bruin 4×100-meter relay squad took first place in a Pac-10
Championship record 43.43 seconds, and Johnson and Roseby went
one-two in the 100m hurdles, propelling UCLA past Stanford and into
first place.
The Bruin victory in the short hurdles was especially
convincing. Johnson won in 12.76 seconds, the nation’s second
fastest collegiate time this season, while Roseby also broke 13
seconds for the second time in two days.
“It was just like practice,” Roseby said. “You
get here and the fastest girls are your teammates.”
That trend continued in the longer sprints, as Johnson cruised
to victory in the 400-meter hurdles and Henderson further
solidified herself as a national championship contender in the
400m.
Johnson, who just a day earlier had blazed to a world-leading
400-meter hurdle time of 54.32 seconds in the prelims, followed the
performance with a remarkably easy victory in the finals.
Not to be outdone, Henderson, who missed the Pac-10
Championships last year due to injury, shaved another tenth of a
second off her world-leading 400m time, coasting to first place in
50.90 seconds, the fastest time in UCLA history.
“It was a great day for the sprints,” said
Henderson, who also won the 200m. “This might be the best
year ever for our sprints team.”
Victories from sophomore Ashley Caldwell (800m) and junior
Candice Baucham (triple jump) padded UCLA’s lead and rendered
the final three events meaningless for the outcome of the team
competition.
Not even scoring 28 points in the second-to-last event of the
day, the 5000m, could help second-place Stanford catch the Bruins.
By the time Henderson crossed the finish line in first place in the
4×400-meter relay, members of the UCLA squad had already begun to
perfect their victory dances.
Overall, the sprinters accounted for 94 of UCLA’s 174.5
points. Roseby ran in eight races during the two-day meet, while
Henderson and Johnson competed in six apiece. That will help
prepare them for the next month’s NCAA Championships, where
each will likely run all four days in a row.
The standout performances from her sprinters were the highlight
of the weekend for Bolden, but the coach said she was pleased with
where UCLA is as a team as it readies itself for the stretch
run.
“We wanted to come in here, do a good job, and leave this
meet healthy,” Bolden said.
Mission accomplished.