For all of its improvement in the rankings this outdoor season, the men’s track and field team had been missing its usual high-ranking performances from its top athletes.
Prior to this past weekend, only one of UCLA’s three male NCAA Indoor Championship qualifiers had even come close to the marks he had reached in the first half of the season.
That one is sophomore high jumper Michael Burke, who has cleared a height just one centimeter beneath his indoor season height and personal best 2.21 meters.
And now, redshirt sophomore thrower Dotun Ogundeji hasn’t just matched his own indoor season performance, he’s outdone it by a long shot. He threw farther than his personal best by 39 centimeters at the Triton Invitational on Saturday.
He also threw a personal best 57.04 meters that currently ranks as the 25th farthest collegiate throw in the nation, and the Bruins’ team ranking rose by two whole places, from 20th to 18th.
There’s still one qualifier, however, that UCLA has yet to receive a typical performance from, and thus reap the benefits in the rankings – senior long jumper Austin Hazel.
In his first meet back from nationals at the beginning of April, he took a half-approach, running half as many or less steps on the runway than he would in a normal approach, and as for the past couple of meets, has gotten in foul trouble on a number of runs.
Since coming home from the Indoor Nationals, Hazel has fouled 13 times on 18 runs, five each in his last two meets.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what’s been going on these past couple of meets,” Hazel said. “I’ve been dealing with a lot of fouls, so me and (volunteer director of operations Rob) Jarvis have been taking the time to really nip that in the bud and work on my penultimate and my position coming into the board.”
His personal best would land him in the top 15 nationally for outdoors right now, and he said that he’s going to try and put everything together in the USC meet this weekend.
Currently, freshman Isaiah Holmes has the longest long jump distance of the outdoor season for the UCLA team. His 7.52 meter jump is just outside the top 50 nationally, though his high jump clearance is still in the top 10.
He’s performed both events fairly consistently this season, and the day he posted that high jump height, he also took first in the long jump. Holmes said then that he had been focusing more on his high jump consistency as opposed to focusing on his long jump, though now that has changed.
“I’ve put a lot more focus on long jump,” Holmes said. “I’ve kind of drifted away from practicing the high (jump) because right now I’m pretty solid in the high jump picture.”
Since altering his concentration, Holmes has steadily increased his long jump distance. He’s gone over 7.50 meters in each of the past two meets, and now he’s aiming to get over the 25-foot barrier, or 7.62 meters.
Between balancing those two events, Holmes is also entered in the triple jump for this weekend. He had practiced the event when training in the fall, but just started to run through the motions again recently.
“I just now picked it up this past week, and yesterday was the first time that I did a full triple since the fall quarter,” Holmes said. “I think I’m actually better than I was in the fall, things have gone really well, I’m a lot stronger and faster.”