Thursday, May 16, 1996
Sprinter sets out to leave her own legacy for w. trackBy Scott
Yamaguchi
Daily Bruin Staff
There was a time  a stretch of almost 15 years  when
UCLA’s women sprinters owned the NCAA Track and Field Championship
meet.
From 1977, when Evelyn Ashford won the first of UCLA’s 100-meter
titles, until 1991, when Janeene Vickers won the last of her three
400-meter hurdles titles, the Drake Stadium track was home to a
slew of world-class sprinters.
Florence Griffith-Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Jeanette Bolden,
Gail Devers and Ashford have all donned the blue and gold and,
later in their careers, Olympic gold.
With Vickers’ departure in 1991 came a noticeable drop in the
level of achievement by UCLA’s speed crew. Since then, only Keisha
Marvin  with a second-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles
in 1994 Â has scored in an individual sprinting event at the
championships.
Things hit rock bottom in 1992, when the Bruins followed a
Vickers-led fourth-place NCAA team finish with a 22nd-place
showing.
Of course, UCLA has returned to the national team title scene,
finishing among the top three for the last three seasons, but the
program’s recent resurgence has been fueled by a dominant group of
throwers and jumpers.
And in the Bruins’ absence, Louisiana State University Â
winner of the last nine team titles  has perched itself
comfortably atop the NCAA sprinting world.
But now, five years after Vickers graduated and nearly a decade
after Devers raced to her NCAA 100-meter title, UCLA’s sprinting
program has experienced a revival of sorts.
It has come in the form of freshman Andrea Anderson, a former
high school All-American who, heading into this weekend’s Pacific
10 Conference Championships at Drake Stadium, has run the fastest
time in the league in both the 100 and 200 this season, as well as
the third-fastest time in the 400.
"She definitely has made a great impact on this program when it
comes to sprinting," said UCLA assistant coach Bobby Kersee, who
served as the Bruins’ head coach from 1985-93 and worked with
Devers and Vickers.
"Realistically, since Gail Devers, she’s shown the most signs of
being a world-class sprinter."
Granted, Anderson hasn’t set the world on fire just yet. She has
only provisionally qualified for this month’s NCAA meet, and unless
she improves her times at the conference meet, the possibility
exists that she won’t make the cut.
Her greatest hope lies in the 200-meters, where her 23.32 ranks
12th in the nation. In the 100, her season best 11.51 ranks 33rd,
and in the 400, her 53.78 ranks 34th.
Among freshman, however, Anderson ranks in the top five in all
three events. And Devers, in her freshman season, earned All
American honors in the 100 and 200 with times of 11.83 and 23.14,
respectively.
"I think this weekend, at the Pac-10 meet, will tell a lot,"
Kersee said. "Her progress has been pretty good, but I still don’t
think she realizes how good she is. I think it’s easier for myself
and Jeanette (Bolden, current UCLA head coach) to realize how good
she is, with Jeanette being a world-class sprinter herself, and me
coaching world-class sprinters.
"We know talent, and sometimes a young talent knows she’s good,
but she really doesn’t know how good she is. I guess that’s what
we’re trying to teach her right now, to have her realize how good
she is and what she has to do to execute good performances in the
sprints."
That task has been a relatively easy one for Bolden and Kersee.
Anderson, a biochemistry student who is interested in
pharmaceuticals, is one of the most coachable athletes in the
program.
Three weeks ago, at the California-Nevada State Championships in
Davis, Anderson was having trouble with her finishes in the 100 and
200. In the finals, she ended up losing both races, by narrow
margins, to California’s Latasha Gilliam.
"I got on her really hard when we were in Davis," Bolden said.
"I saw some things that I didn’t like. Nothing bad, but I rode her
pretty hard.
"So I made some adjustments in the training and told her that I
can’t get on her if I haven’t taught her these things. I spent the
next week working with her on the weaknesses in her race."
And how did she respond?
The following weekend, with the Bruins hosting USC in the final
dual meet of the season, Anderson posted season-best marks in
winning both of her sprinting events.
Her victory in the 200, which led a 1-2 sweep by her and
teammate Darlene Malco, was especially critical. At the time, USC
was leading the meet, and anything other than the 1-2 Bruin sweep
would have guaranteed a victory for the Trojans.
"She showed her championship quality when it came down to the
200-meters, realizing that if she didn’t win that event  her
and Darlene both  there would be no chance for the team to
come back and win it in the mile relay," Kersee said. "That was
impressive to me."
It also earned the young talent her first Pac-10 Women’s Track
Athlete of the Week honors, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy Bolden
or Anderson, whose intense competitive drive has carried her this
far and is sure to take her higher.
"If she keeps on her path of excellence, if she sets high
standards for herself and really goes after achieving them, and if
she doesn’t get burned out, she’ll be extremely successful," Bolden
said. "And when I say burned out, I mean that I always have to tell
her, ‘Andrea, why don’t you relax a little bit  why don’t you
watch a little TV and take a little time off.’
"I get on her about being too much into track and too much into
school, about trying to find some time to relax and go to the
movies  just to kind of chill."
Which is something that Anderson, a former Track and Field News
High School All-American, hasn’t done in a while. When she was 11,
she ditched seven years of competitive gymnastics experience in
favor of the track, and she hasn’t slowed down since.
At Long Beach Poly High School, Anderson helped lead her team to
three state titles, and last summer, she earned a spot on the
national team that competed in the Pan-American Junior
Championships in Santiago, Chile.
Her 400-meter relay squad won a gold medal.
"That was a different experience," Anderson said. "It was
different because, right when we got into town, we would have
crowds of people following us everywhere we went.
"It was different because, you’re going into a country where
they’ve never seen anything like what we were wearing or what we
had.
"It really makes you appreciate what you have at home."
Her decision to attend UCLA was, after growing up in Long Beach,
only logical.
"I’ve always wanted to come to UCLA," she said. "Bobby and
Jeanette are two of the world’s greatest coaches, and they’ve had
some great sprinters coming out of UCLA.
"Ever since I started running track, I knew that I wanted to go
all the way. I wanted to be like Florence and Jackie and Gail."
Now, as the days of her freshman season wind down, Anderson has
posted the seventh-best marks in school history in the 100 and 200,
and she is looking more and more like Florence, and Jackie, and
Gail.
UCLA Sports Info
Freshman Andrea Anderson, the Pac-10’s leading sprinter,
delivered a first-place finish in the 200-meter-dash and helped the
Bruins edge USC two weeks ago.