For some, the indoor season is a time to fine-tune and prepare
for a successful outdoor season. For UCLA, some top Bruins already
look like they are in midseason form.
With indoor competition just beginning, some of the track and
field team’s elite athletes have wasted no time in cranking
out big marks and times, showing that they are not just prepping
for the outdoor season.
“Our big stars are training well,” men’s coach
Art Venegas said. “If you see some fast times early on, that
is going to bode well for us at nationals at the indoor
level.”
With just two meets under their belts, the Bruins’
performances would seem to indicate great success down the road,
according to Venegas’ predictions. The men have already had a
handful of NCAA provisional qualifiers, including senior pole
vaulter Mike Landers, who, in his first meet of the year at
Seattle’s Washington Invite, leaped to an indoor
lifetime-best of 17 feet 5 inches, which ranks him as one of the
best pole vaulters in the country.
For Landers, an outdoor All-American, the indoor season is not
just for fine-tuning; he fully expects to compete at the national
level this year.
“I’m trying to be competitive,” Landers said.
“This is the first year that we are going to start tapering
for the national meet; usually we just train through it.”
Landers is not the only Bruin with his sights set on the NCAA
Indoor Championships, with juniors John Caulfield (shot put),
Michael Johnson (triple jump) and Dominique Easterling (triple
jump), and sophomore Kevin Craddock (hurdles) all posting
impressive opening performances to start the season and securing
NCAA provisional qualifying marks.
While the men have not traditionally been big players at the
national level in the indoors tournament, things may change this
year with so many athletes performing so well this early on.
“We have a lot of younger guys and they should be running
fast early,” Venegas. “If they get rolling, they should
do something spectacular.”
Being so young means a higher ceiling for performance, according
to Venegas, and this team is teeming with young talent. In addition
to the athletes who have already qualified provisionally for the
NCAA meet, a few more underclassmen are also knocking on the
door.
Two standout freshmen in particular, Darius Savage (throws) and
Darius Reed (hurdles), have also been impressive thus far and have
good chances of qualifying as the season goes on.
“(Savage) joins us straight from football, so he has a lot
to catch up with, but he looks to have some of the biggest throws
ever for a UCLA freshman,” Venegas said.
“Reed has a lot of experience running indoors, running in
Colorado,” he continued.
While the team does have high hopes for indoors, the Bruins are
likely to be even better once the full squad joins the team
outdoors. Having a fruitful indoor year will only translate into
greater success in the spring.
“A good indoor season gives us a lot of momentum,”
Landers said. “People start the outdoor season much
better.”
Women’s Track
Just as the men have gotten off to a fast start, the
women’s track team has followed suit.
After beginning the season just last weekend, also in Seattle,
the team sported some impressive marks with a very limited
roster.
Leading the way was sophomore sensation Rhonda Watkins. Watkins,
the 2006 Junior World Long Jump Champion, opened up her first UCLA
indoor meet with a win, jumping 20-9 to tie for first place. The
mark was easily good enough for an NCAA provisional qualification
and was just off of the automatic qualification mark.
Also in the jumps, junior transfer Keneisha Creary picked up a
provisional qualifier with her leap of 5-10 in the high jump, good
enough for second place.
Junior Allie Bohannon, who is coming off an exceptional cross
country season, picked up the last provisional qualifier of the
weekend for the Bruins, finishing in a tie for first place in the
mile with 4:43.43.
The men’s and women’s teams will both take a week
off before traveling to Fayetteville, Ark., for the Tyson
Invitational next weekend.