Women's track uses potent team effort to defend indoor title

By Natalie Clericuzio     3/13/08 7:00pm

Even though track and field is not always recognized as a conventional team sport, the members of the women's track and field team were anything but individualistic in defending their league title two weeks ago at the Conference USA Indoor Championships. Despite placing first in only two events, Rice used 15 top-three finishes to pull out a nearly twenty-point rout to best second -lace University of Texas-El Paso 133.5-114.5 at University of Houston's Yeoman Field House.The Owls will get a chance to rest this week - none of the members earned a spot in the NCAA Indoor Championships. However, more Owls were on the provisional list than in previous years: Senior distance runners Callie Wells and Lennie Waite, senior pole vaulter Rachel Greff, senior sprinter Desarie Walwyn and sophomore Sarah Lyons all posted provisional qualifying times during the season.

Although the win was largely a team effort, Lyons and Greff were the only two Owls to make it to the top of the podium. Lyons nabbed first place in the 400 with a time of 54.55 seconds while Greff cleared the pole vault at a height of 13 feet, 4.25 inches. Greff broke a school record - both Beth Hinshaw (Wiess '04) and Ally Daum (Will Rice '04) had jumped 13-3.5 - and a meet record while still recovering from flu-like symptoms: It was one of the Owls' gutsier performances of the day.

With the boost from the first-place finishes, the rest of the squad performed well enough to garner important points. The 3000 reflected the overall pattern of Rice's team win: The best individual time was Wells' 9:45.00, good for third place. However, the Owls swept third through seventh place, gaining 20 points from the single race.

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Head coach Jim Bevan, who was named C-USA Coach of the Year for the second time in a row, said the women not only took his pre-race advice to heart, but also knew what it took to grab the win.

"We can line up and I can tell the girls we need to score so many points, and they can go out and score so many points," Bevan said. "It's nice to know what you need to do [to] win the meet."

The distance runners' success was not limited to the 3000. Waite ran both the 800 and the mile, placing fourth in both with times of 2:11.84 and 4:49.28, respectively.

Wells matched her third-place finish in the 3000 with a third-place finish in the mile, posting a time of 4:47.55. Additionally, sophomore Nicole Mericle placed fifth in the mile at 4:59.36. Freshmen Becky Wade and Allison Pye also pulled double duty in the 5000, with Wade finishing third in 17:05.89 and Pye fifth in 17:08.57.

Led by Lyons, Walwyn and sophomore Shakera Reece, the sprinters also carried their weight to help in the victory. In addition to her first-place finish in the 400, Lyons also ran the 200 in 24.55, good for fifth place. Walwyn also placed third in the 60 with a time of 7.44 and sixth in the 200 at 24.64. Reece took fourth in the 60 and seventh in the 200, just .33 behind Walwyn.

Senior Lacee Carmon continued her pattern of competing in an amalgamation of events, taking fifth place in the long jump with a mark of 19-0.5. In addition to Carmon's points, Rice scored in five field events: high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump and the pentathlon. Sophomore Eunique Hamilton leapt to 5-6 in the high jump, garnering fifth place. Hamilton also scored in the long jump, where she placed seventh at 18-6.5, and the triple jump, where she took fifth with a jump of 40-7.75. Freshman Sarah Agara also placed in the triple jump at 40-0.5. Greff's first-place in the pole vault was complemented by freshman Ari Ince's fourth-place 11-11.75 leap. Lastly, junior Andrea Jackson nabbed seventh place in the pentathlon with a score of 3038.

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