June 8, 2006
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - After spanning 14 years between individual outdoor national champions, the Arizona State University women's track and field team picked up their second in three years Thursday night as Victoria Jackson won the 10,000m run to pace the second day of action for the Sun Devils at the 2006 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships being held at the Alex G. Spanos Sports Complex in Sacramento, Calif.
With the win and another strong performance from Amy Hastings, the women's team holds a slight lead in the team race with 15 total points with Auburn and Duke trailing with 14 and 10, respectively. On the men's side, Joshua Kinnaman's finish in the decathlon netted the men three points and places them tied for 14th while Arkansas and Wisconsin are tied for the lead with 14.
Jackson, the 2006 Pac-10 champion at 5,000m, set a school record while winning her crown as she covered the 25-lap event in 32:54.72, bettering Hastings' school mark of 33:17.81 run earlier in the season. Jackson, along with Hastings, hung back in the second pack as three runners set a fast pace early only to see the two Sun Devils slowly creep ahead until Jackson claimed the lead for good while Hastings settled into fourth place. Both women earned All-America honors giving Jackson two for her career and Hastings, who clocked in at 33:41.18, the seventh of her career and third of the year.
The win by Jackson not only marked the first national title for the senior, but also marked the first distance title for the Sun Devil program on the outdoor track. The longest distance ever yielding a national title before today was the 400m dash by Maicel Malone in 1990. The crown also is the second of the year for the distance corps following Hastings' indoor 5,000m title won in March. Prior to the race, the last time an ASU athlete won an outdoor NCAA title was in 2004 when Jacquelyn Johnson won the heptathlon as a true freshman. She will begin competition as the top-seed in the event Friday.
In the only scored men's event of the day featuring a Sun Devil competitor, Kinnaman continued his up-and-down placement on the leader board before ending on an upswing and a sixth-place finish to earn three team points and his second All-America honor in the multi-events this year (eight in the indoor heptathlon). After starting the day in seventh place, Kinnaman slipped a spot to eighth following a 14th place finish in the 110m high hurdles (15.42). In the discus, Kinnaman recorded a personal-best mark (decathlon competitions only) of 45.54m (149-05) to win the event and move up to fourth overall.
He then cleared a personal-best tying mark of 4.50m (14-09.00) in the pole vault to tie for eighth in the event and slipped to seventh in the standings. With an injured elbow to his throwing arm, Kinnaman was able to record a mark of 40.44m (132-8) in the javelin to score points, tying for 18th and only falling one place to eighth. In the final event, the 1,500m run, Kinnaman finished eighth in the race with a time of 4:41.75, running a personal best by over 18 seconds, to move into sixth place overall.
Elsewhere in the women's competitions, Jessica Pressley and Sarah Stevens each qualified for the finals of the shot put as the duo finished seventh (16.22m) and ninth (16.06m), respectively. Latosha Wallace finished 11th in the qualifying round of the 400m hurdles in a personal best 57.57 to move on to the semifinals in the event. Wallace and Stevens both failed to qualify in another event on the day as Wallace and the 4x400m relay team of Bridgette Williams, Christina Hardeman and Shauntel Elcock placed 11th in 3:33.86 (the 10th-fastest time in school history) while Stevens finished 19th in the hammer with a toss of 57.75m (189-06). The final Sun Devil athlete on the day was Rachel Ellison, who placed 28th in the 1,500m in 4:28.79.
Competition at the national championship meet continues through Saturday.