The UCLA track and field team has traveled the nation for the winter indoor season.
The Bruins toured Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Washington and Indiana, but no trip is more important than the one 10 athletes will make this weekend to Alabama.
The top-16 competitors in every event and top 12 in each relay will go toe-to-toe at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships to vie for All-American positions and national titles.
Representing UCLA will be school and MPSF record-holder Steele Wasik, shot-putters Nicholas Scarvelis, Braheme Days and Dotun Ogundeji, and the UCLA-record-breaking men’s distance medley relay team.
Wasik, a sophomore, added 184 points two weeks ago onto what was his personal best in the heptathlon. The performance blew away the target multi-event coach Jack Hoyt set for him, and Wasik said he has even more room to improve.
“I was so happy with how I did, and my coaches were like, ‘Wow, you did this the wrong way, you did that the wrong way,’” Wasik said. “They were really impressed that I could do so well with just adrenaline.”
At the conference championships, he cleared 205 centimeters in the high jump with ease, but could not stop his ankles from hitting the bar on the way down. That would have garnered him an addition 28 points. He feels there’s another 50 centimeters for him in the shot put – 30 more points – and he had just one legal long jump at MPSFs.
“It was my first jump. I fouled my second and third,” Wasik said. “They were much farther, much farther. Really big jumps, and I just got too excited, was a little too close and fouled them.”
A fellow second-year will also try to reel in the adrenaline at nationals this weekend.
Redshirt freshman Ogundeji steadily improved his throws over the course of the indoor season but fell victim to the atmosphere of the conference championships, too.
“At MPSF I kind of got way too excited during the meet and ended up not producing like I normally do,” Ogundeji said.
Ogundeji, like Wasik however, had a promising foul. One of his final two throws that the referees flagged went far beyond 19 meters, something he has not repeated since he threw 19.04 meters in mid-February.
“That week I was really focused on throwing far to make sure I even made it into the championship,” Ogundeji said. “That focus is back for this weekend. All I’ve been thinking about for the past days since I found out (I made nationals) is how to throw further.”
The rest of the shot put team has been practicing with the same mindset. Senior Scarvelis, as the third seed, is two spots away from a national championship and sophomore Days, the ninth seed, is one spot away from a first team All-American.
Before they throw on Saturday, though, the UCLA distance medley relay team will be the first Bruins to possibly receive accolades.
The quartet that broke the school record in February consisted of seniors Ferdinand Edman, Joe Herrera, Nick Hartle and Austin O’Neil, but the coaches are still discussing whether or not freshman Rai Benjamin should run the 400-meter leg.
“Rai is faster than Joe, but has been dealing with some nagging injuries,” O’Neil said. “So he has more potential (for us), but has some injury problems so I’m not sure who will run, but he’ll be traveling with us.”
The Bruin distance medley relay team will compete as the 10th seed in a congested heat of 12, where little more than four seconds separate the first and last team in a nine-and-a-half-minute race.
“Some teams aren’t going to run as well as they should, or they can drop the baton, or some of them will maybe trip and fall because the indoor track is so tight,” O’Neil said. “Anything can happen. We’re plenty confident in our training, and we have a really good group.”