With one event left and the final team standings virtually set, coach Jeanette Bolden took her 4x400m relay team aside to deliver one final message.
“We hadn’t won an event all weekend,” Bolden said. “I didn’t have to say anything other than that.”
The Bruins jumped out of the gate ahead of the field and never looked back.
The relay team of Ashlea McLaughlin, Krystin Lacy, Krishna Curry and Nicole Leach ran away with the event conference title and a top-five NCAA time at the Pac-10 Championships in Eugene, Ore. The team improved its season best to 3 minutes, 33.62 seconds and finished three seconds ahead of the closest team.
“It was a big opening leg by Ashlea,” Bolden said. “I got on her (Saturday) night for not qualifying in the 400, and she came through with a big run.”
UCLA took fifth place as a team for the second year in a row with 79.50 points. Oregon won the crown with 165.50.
“We needed a lot of things to go right,” Bolden said. “If we had an OK meet, we would finish in the top five.”
Both the men’s and women’s Ducks teams won, and Oregon became the second school to accomplish that feat.
The Bruin men and women have won the same season eight times previously, the most recent in 2004.
UCLA had several strong performances throughout the two-day meet, with plenty of season bests.
Leach and Lacy finished second and third in the 400-meters to earn 14 points for the team. Leach ran 52.93, and Lacy had a season best of 53.16.
Curry also ran a season best with her second-place finish in the 800m in a time of 2:06.01. In the hurdles, Lindsay Rowe ran 13.57 to come in fourth in the 100m hurdles, and Ryann Krais doubled up with two fifth-place finishes in the 100m hurdles (13.61) and 400m hurdles (59.79). Krais earned 13 total points for the team with the two races and a fourth place in the heptathlon last weekend.
The 4x100m relay team ran its fastest time of the year with a fourth place in 44.82.
During the first day of competition, Ciara Viehweg ran just shy of her lifetime best in the 3,000m steeplechase. She placed fourth with a time of 10:22.99.
“It was a good way for (Ciara) to go out being a senior,” Bolden said.
The run was Viehweg’s best showing at the Pac-10 Championships.
Brittany Borman picked up the first points for the Bruins with a fifth-place finish in the shot put (47-00.25) and the next day came in seventh in the discus (152-8).
In two weeks, UCLA will head back up to Eugene for the NCAA Western Regionals. The next time around, the Bruins are hoping for a more balanced set of performances to finish higher.
“We didn’t have a lot of depth this weekend,” Bolden said. “Depth is what you need to win championships.”