SACRAMENTO “”mdash; Nicole Leach came to the NCAA Championships in search of a challenge. She did not find one.
The No. 1-ranked hurdler in the nation, Leach blew away the field in the 400-meter hurdles to take home her first national title at Hornet Stadium at California State University, Sacramento. The sophomore’s performance spurred UCLA on to fifth place overall, with a total of 30 points.
In a laugher, Leach won her signature event in a time of 54.32, over a second better than the second-place finisher, Nickiesha Wilson of Louisiana State.
“I thought that at least three girls would run under 55 seconds,” said Leach. “My plan was to go into the last hurdle and just take it home.”
The Philadelphia native breezed through the qualifying rounds, winning each of her heats easily leading up to her wire-to-wire victory in Saturday morning’s final. The sophomore attributes her superb condition to the intense amount of sprinting she has done throughout the season.
“(My success) is because I’ve been running 400 races before the hurdles all season,” Leach said. “Now I have been able to focus on just the hurdles.”
Her time currently makes her the No. 2-ranked intermediate hurdler in the world and puts her in prime position heading into the USA Track and Field Championships in late June.
RELAY TEAM GRABS FOURTH PLACE: Leach also anchored the UCLA mile relay team, which came in fourth place in a season-best time of 3:30.46, which also places them in the top-10 all-time at UCLA. The 4x400m team comprised of Johanna Monthe, Maris Wisdom, Krystin Lacy and Leach held their own in the tough field, battling in the top pack for the entire race.
“It was chaotic,” Lacy said of her leg of the relay. “I could barely see Maris coming down with the baton, so I had to make up from that … at the end, it evened out but it was still crowded.”
In the last leg, Leach was handed the baton in fourth place with runners from Texas and Texas A&M breathing down her neck. But even after running the 400m hurdle race less than two hours earlier, Leach was able to hold off the competition to secure fourth place.
UCLA had not been ranked in this event all season until the week leading up to the championships. Throughout the year, the team shuffled its lineup because of injuries, but found the right combination just in time for the postseason, coming in second at Pac-10s, first at the Western Regionals and now fourth at the NCAA Championships.
“We battled a lot of injuries and moved the lineup around a lot,” Lacy said. “You never knew where you were running, but now we can focus on exactly where we are going to be.”
NOTES: Junior Ingrid Kantola placed eighth in the pole vault Friday, securing outdoor All-American honors to go along with her fifth-place finish earlier in the year at the indoor championships. Kantola’s clearance of 13 feet, 3 1/2 inches was not a season’s best, but still earned her a spot on the podium. “I feel like I learned a lot,” Kantola said. “I didn’t live up to the potential that I could have, so I am a little disappointed.”
Teammate redshirt senior Jacqueline Nguyen did not compete due to a flare-up of tendonitis in her right knee. Redshirt junior Renee Williams finished in 16th place in the qualifying rounds of the long jump, failing to qualify with her best mark of 20-2 1/2. Senior MacKenzie Hill finished in 26th place with a time of 1:01.50 in the first round of the 400m hurdles and did not advance.