Three Bruin runners will all be striving to attain the same goal
this Saturday, but the paths that each has taken to get to this
point are all different. Austin Ramos, Mike Haddan and Ashley
Caldwell will all be looking to move on to the NCAA Championships
this weekend at the Western Regional Qualifying meet in Palo
Alto.
For Caldwell, this race is nothing new, as she has gone on to
advance to the championships in each of her previous two
seasons.
“I honestly do feel very confident,” said Caldwell,
who has excelled all season. “I’m much wiser and I have
a lot more knowledge now. Also the way I’ve been training and
staying healthy helps to give me a lot of confidence as
well.”
Even though she has gone on to run in Terre Haute, Ind., the
past two seasons, the difference this year will be that Caldwell
will almost definitely have to qualify individually as her team
looks as if it will miss the cut for the NCAA meet for only the
second time in eight years.
“In the past it was a team effort,” Caldwell said.
“So now I’m going to focus on running a smart race and
doing enough to qualify. It’s definitely a more tactical race
this time.”
To qualify, runners need to finish in the top four spots not
counting those individuals who qualify with their teams.
Nonetheless, based on Caldwell’s fourth-place finish at
the Pac-10 Championships, it looks as if she is in prime position
to make a run at securing her second All-American honor, the first
coming in 2003.
Junior Austin Ramos is in a similar position, having run very
well all season long and consistently finishing amongst the front
pack in every race. However, Ramos has never made an appearance at
the NCAA Championships and sees Saturday’s race as an
opportunity to show that he is ready to make the leap from good to
great.
“It’s going to be a great opportunity to run against
a stacked field,” Ramos said. “Basically it’s a
do-or-die meet. In the past two years I haven’t performed as
well as I would have liked to at Pac-10s or at regionals, so I
think this is a time to really prove myself.”
Ramos finished in an impressive fifth place at the Pac-10s and
has consistently beaten the lead runners of Cal Poly and Portland,
two of the top contending teams which will be joining the rest of
the Pac-10 squads in the Western Region on Saturday.
For sophomore Mike Haddan, the pressure of finishing high in any
race, let alone the Western Regional meet, is fairly new.
Before his breakout race at the Pac-10s, where he finished in
sixth place just one second behind Ramos,
Haddan had yet to capitalize on the immense potential he showed
when he won the state meet in the 800-meter race as a sophomore in
high school.
“Michael is new to this elite level of performance,”
coach Eric Peterson said.
“I think that now that he has had a high level experience,
he can draw on that during the race so he can know how the race
should feel and how it should be executed.”
During Peterson’s six-year tenure as the men’s head
coach, he has never had two athletes qualify for the NCAA
Championships in the same season.
Team-wise, the Bruins will be looking to go out on a positive
note, as it looks highly unlikely that either team will be able to
gain an at-large lead.