Rice Track & Field 2011: Women look to recapture first place from UTEP

By Natalie Clericuzio     1/13/11 6:00pm

The first week of classes: a week of limbo, where days are spent floating from class to class, picking and choosing which seminars will be interesting enough to make those three hours fly by and deliberating which lectures will be intriguing enough to encourage regular attendance. A week that brings the elusive luxury of being at college without any real responsibilities. A week to ease slowly back into the grind of papers, tests and projects. For some Rice students, however, the first week of classes looks very different. For example, the women's track team competes in its first meet today. The first week of classes for the track team was a final chance to tune up after a full semester and winter break spent training, because, come this afternoon, they are back in competition. Now it counts.

Fresh faces/team leaders

At the front of the pack will be a bevy of familiar faces this season. Seniors Tina Robinson (throws), Ari Ince (pole vault), Sarah Agara (jumps), Allison Pye (distance) and redshirt junior Kimberly Stanford (hurdles) all trained well during the fall, according to Head Coach Jim Bevan.

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"When we did our testing in early December, right before everybody went home, you could see the amount of work, the hard work that was done this fall," Bevan said. "I am very impressed with where those seniors are relative to where they were a year ago. All are national caliber, and they have the ability to do well at the conference level and to be in the discussion about nationals."

Ince comes into the season looking to defend two indoor and two outdoor pole vault conference titles from 2009 and 2010. Robinson has steadily improved throughout her career at Rice, throwing a personal best in the shot put at the end of the indoor season in 2010. Agara also marked her personal bests in the triple jump at the Conference USA indoor and outdoor meets. Pye returns to the indoor arena for the first time since 2009 after redshirting for the 2010 season. After transferring to Rice from the University of Iowa, Stanford has steadily improved her marks in the hurdles.

The seniors and other returning members will be bolstered by an influx of new faces to the squad. The crew includes sprinter Simone Martin and sprint hurdler Michelle Young, both from Canada, middle distance runner Elle Moody and 400- and 800-meter runner Sidney Cauthorn, both from Austin, and Meredith Gamble, a distance runner from Houston who competed for the cross country team in the fall. These new faces will hopefully help to fill the gaps in the team left by the graduation of sprinter Shakera Reece (Will Rice '10), distance runner Britany Williams (Will Rice '10) and jumper Shannon Moran (Wiess '10), among others.

The team also will be bolstered in the outdoor season by a few seniors who have exhausted indoor eligibility but not outdoor. These include distance runner Nicole Mericle, sprinter Brittany Washington and sprinter Sarah Lyons. These three will be sure to contribute for the second season of track this spring.

Looking ahead to the schedule

This weekend's meet, the Leonard Hilton Memorial, will largely serve as an opportunity for the team to shake off any rust and finally return to the track. Held at the University of Houston's Yeoman Fieldhouse, the meet will feel akin to a home meet to the Owls, who compete in several indoor meets at Houston. Rice will be largely competing against a mix of Southland Conference schools and of course, Houston.

While Bevan does not plan to bring the full squad to this weekend's meet, the bulk of the Owls will be competing. Luckily, the team is healthy on the whole, which should allow for a strong showing by Rice to open the season.

The largest meet the team will attend in the indoor season will be the Texas A&M Challenge on Feb. 12, hosted by Texas A&M University and featuring schools from the Big 12, Pac 10 and Southeastern Conferences, as well as C-USA. The meet will provide a strong test for the Owls, according to Bevan.

"The A&M meet will have some of the best teams in the United States," Bevan said.

The season will culminate at the C-USA Championship meet, held again at Houston's Yeoman Fieldhouse Feb. 25-26. The Owls are at an advantage again thanks to the proximity of the meet, and the team aims to return to the top of the podium after placing second to the University of Texas-El Paso in 2010.

"We definitely expect to win conference, both indoor and outdoor," junior distance runner Marie Thompson said. "Outdoor conference is here at Rice, so we have a home advantage and we're really looking forward to that.

"We're just in a different position this year. Instead of being on top [coming off three straight C-USA championships] we're in an underdog scenario, which is a different perspective. We want to regain it so it's more of a wanting to get back on top rather than fending people off."

Bevan expects several other C-USA teams to have potential for greatness in 2011, including the University of Central Florida, UTEP, University of Tulsa, Houston and Southern Methodist University.

Each of these schools has its own unique strengths. UCF had a standout season in 2010, taking the conference's top honors in the Outdoor Championship. UTEP, on the other hand, came out on top the Indoor Championship of last season. In addition, Risper Kimaiyo of UTEP placed fourth in the nation at the national cross country meet.

Tulsa's distance squad will also be formidable, as it had an impressive cross country season, qualifying for nationals for the first time in school history. Houston traditionally has always had strong track teams, and 2011 appears to be no different than the past.

Regardless of the level of competition from other schools, the Owls' season goals remain unchanged: to win.

"Obviously we want to be able to maximize our performance at the conference meet in six weeks," Bevan said. "We want to compete for a conference title, and, beyond that, we would like to get as many people as we can to go to nationals."

While the conference promises to test the Owls' abilities this season, right now Rice has one focus: compete at its highest level, which will likely be at an even higher level than in 2010, according to Bevan.

"The nice thing is we've got a lot of people who are going to be able to show that they've improved since last year," Bevan said. "A lot of hard work and dedication a lot of the time equates to improvement. So we're looking forward to being able to show how much we have improved in a year's time.

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