SACRAMENTO “”mdash; Her day cut short after failing to clear the
opening bar in the pole vaulting finals, an inconsolable Chelsea
Johnson sat dejectedly alongside the runway, tears splattering
at her feet.
This certainly wasn’t how the freshman phenom expected to
make a splash at her first NCAA Championship meet.
But for Johnson and her UCLA teammates, little about their four
days in Sacramento lived up to expectations.
The No. 3 Bruins entered the meet hoping to challenge Texas and
eventual champion LSU for the team title, but they were never
really a factor. A series of uncharacteristically poor individual
performances relegated UCLA to a disappointing eighth place finish,
its worst since 1996.
“We had some misfortune, particularly in the field
events,” head coach Jeanette Bolden said. “At the
national championships you have to be perfect for four days, but
things didn’t go our way.”
The Bruin woes began barely an hour into the meet when defending
NCAA champion Chaniqua Ross failed to qualify for the finals in the
discus.
With dozens of friends and family members on hand, the Elk
Grove, Calif. native fouled on two of her three throws,
managing only a mediocre 160-foot, 7-inch heave. That mark was more
than 20 feet short of her championship-winning throw of a year
ago.
“I’ve been openly critical of her all season,”
UCLA throws coach Art Venegas said. “Winning came a little
too easy for her last year, and I don’t think her
concentration was there. But if she had thrown what she had earlier
this season, she would have placed decently. That would have at
least kept us in the running in the team competition.”
Instead the Bruins went from long shots to having no shot at
all.
When defending NCAA shot put champion Jessica Cosby also failed
to qualify for the finals early Thursday afternoon, all hope for a
top-three finish was snuffed out.
The squad’s title hopes dashed, Bolden waved the white
flag that night. She pulled Sheena Johnson, Monique Henderson, and
Ysanne Williams from the 4×400-meter relay preliminaries to rest
their legs in preparation for their individual events.
“I wanted to do everything I could to leave this meet with
an individual championship,” Bolden said. “When things
didn’t go our way the first day, we decided that saving
Sheena, Ysanne and Monique made the most sense.”
In hindsight, that proved to be the right decision.
While the Bruins’ overmatched alternate relay squad failed
to qualify for the finals Thursday night, Johnson more than made up
for it the following evening. The junior provided one of the few
highlights of the week for the Bruins, posting the second-best
collegiate mark of all time (54.24 seconds) in capturing the 400m
hurdle championship.
Williams also ran well in the event, overcoming a stress
fracture in her right foot to take sixth place in a personal best
56.84 seconds.
“I wasn’t happy with my performance at the Regional
meet,” said Williams, who had finished a distant fifth in the
hurdles two weeks ago at Stanford. “I wanted to get my head
together and get ready for here. I’m so happy that it all
worked out.”
But the pair of spectacular performances were not enough to get
the Bruins back on track.
On Saturday, Cari Soong struggled to a disappointing fifth place
finish in the hammer throw, and that was followed by Chelsea
Johnson’s struggles in the pole vault. That night Henderson
placed seventh in the 400m and pre-meet favorite Lena Nilsson took
second in the 1500m, capping a difficult week for UCLA.
Although the season did not end in the manner she might have
hoped, Bolden can take solace in the fact that the program will
graduate just two seniors ““ Ross and Williams ““ that
qualified for the NCAA meet.
“College track is about rebounding,” Bolden said.
“We’ve got a young team, and a great freshmen class
coming in. Next year I expect we’ll be in the top
three.”