Some of the upperclassmen on the UCLA track and field team have seen five Pac-12 championships in their tenures as Bruins.
When redshirt senior Kylie Price and senior sprinter and hurdler Andre’ Chapman, who didn’t compete in the 2014 season, first competed for the team in 2012, the women finished eighth out of 12 teams while the men finished fourth. In that meet, Price scored five points by taking fourth in the long jump, while Chapman did not score.
Sunday marked the four-year anniversary of their first conference championships, and their journey from new freshmen to ranked senior leaders has correlated with the team’s point spread.
Price heads into the NCAA regionals meet with the 10th-best long jump in the nation, while Chapman missed the cut for regionals by less than a tenth of a second.
Until this weekend, the most points the women’s jumps and pole vault section of the team scored in Price’s five-year career came in 2014 when she took second in the long jump, something she also did in 2013.
When she redshirted last year, performance in the jumps and pole vault unit dropped nine points. Her first-place finish and return to action Saturday propelled the section to record more points than in any of the past five Pac-12 meets.
“Jumping far in a meet makes my teammates want to jump far too,” Price said. “We all want to be on the same level, and we can. … Being around people that are big competitors helps a lot with my own competition and it forces me to want to do good.”
Similar to Price and the jumps and pole vault division, Chapman’s sprinting and hurdling division also had its best performance in the last five years. In 2012, the men’s sprints team scored 16 points. They dropped to eight points the year after but have been on the rise ever since.
“We’re a very small group, but we have very strong individuals within our small group that are very vital to our success,” Chapman said. “Their hunger and determination to compete to the best of their abilities helps drive our program forward and motivate us.”
The sprints and hurdles section of the team – members who regularly compete in the 100, 200 and 400-meter dashes, 110 and 400-meter hurdles, and 4×100 and 4×400-meter relays – nearly quadrupled the amount of points they scored in the eight-point 2013 season.
They scored 27 points after scoring no more than 18 at a single conference championship in the past five years. Though Chapman has used up his eligibility, he is confident that they can continue the recent upward projection.
“As long as we continue to stay hungry and have athletes stay motivated, we’ll be headed in a very positive direction,” Chapman said. “If we have guys that want to succeed and will do what they need to do to get there, then I feel like we’ll be very successful.”
Other seniors, like distance runner Nick Hartle, have seen one less conference championship in their time on the team but have contributed heavily to upward swings in their divisions as well.
Hartle has scored in each of his Pac-12 championships, taking seventh as a freshman, second as a sophomore and fifth as a junior in the 800-meter run.
As the fourth-fastest half-miler in the western region, Hartle is more focused on the NCAA nationals, which is in one and a half weeks.
Even without a top-three performance, the men’s distance team contributed 12 points to the 94.2 the team scored overall, tying their best finish in conference since 2005 when the team took second place.
Those 12 points came from Hartle’s 800 and senior Lane Werley’s second place finish in the 10K, which also ties the most the distance team has scored in conference since the duo competed in their first seasons in 2013.
Only time will tell if the different sections of the UCLA track and field team can come up with sufficient points to replace those it will lose when seniors like Price, Hartle and Werley graduate.
Over their time here, they have impacted the conference championship point spread significantly, and there is still room at regionals and nationals for them to put a punctuation mark on their legacies.
No disrespect to Kylie, however your article didn’t accurately count other jumps numbers for the women Bruins, maybe only LJ . Last year (2015) at PAC-12’s, the women’s HJ took 1st and 5th place (14 points), with pole vault (4 pts.) LJ (6 pts.) and TJ – (2 pts.) all are part of the ‘jumps’ team. Alexis Walker finished 2nd in HJ in 2012 for 8 points and, in 2014 by herself, she scored 12.25 points out of the 64 points scored by the Bruin women at PAC-12’s for HJ, 4 x 400 and Hep. Just saying…