May 12, 2007
PALO ALTO, Calif. - History was the name of the game at the Pac-10 Track & Field Championships taking place on Cobb Track and Angell Field on the Stanford campus Saturday as the Arizona State University track and field program opened competition with several outstanding performances. Through the first day of the meet, the defending champion ASU women lead the team race with 73 points while Washington State is second at 49.83. The Sun Devil men are currently in third place with 39 points while both Arizona and Oregon share the lead with 47.
Each gender captured a pair of individual crowns on the opening day with Sarah Stevens becoming just the fifth different woman in the history of the conference to win both the shot put and the discus in the same Pac-10 meet. On the men's side, Aaron Aguayo won his fourth 3,000m steeplechase crown, making him the first to do so in the Conference's history while Matt Turner, competing in his first Pac-10 meet, won the long jump.
Stevens opened the day by defending her 2006 crown with a winning mark of 17.61m in the shot put to lead a 1-2 sweep of the event as teammate Jessica Pressley finished as the runner-up with a mark of 17.47m. Moving on to the discus, Stevens was sitting fourth in the event heading into the final round where she recorded the third-best throw in school history (57.73m) to take the crown. The Sun Devils also fared well as a team in the event as Pressley placed fifth (51.73m) and Tai Battle (51.50m) finished sixth.
Back on the men's side of the action, Aguayo turned in a time of 8:36.42 to win his fourth steeplechase crown to become only the 11th student-athlete (male and female included) to win the same event four times in a career at the Pac-10 Championships. Aguayo also shares a solid distinction with one of the sport's greatest distance runners, Steve Prefontaine (3 Mile Run), as the duo are the only two men to sweep a race longer than 1,500m. Aguayo was followed across the line by Kyle Alcorn, who placed third in 8:46.10.
Turner, an All-American in the long jump during the past indoor season, rounded out the victories for the Sun Devils as he won the event with a leap of 7.84m, the eighth-best mark in ASU history. Turner, who picked up 10 team points for the Sun Devils, was joined in the scoring column by a pair of shot put athletes as Ryan Whiting placed third (19.32m) and Tomas Navarro (18.00m) finished seventh.
Three other women's events were contested as scored finals on the day with the Sun Devils scoring points in both. In the field, Jacquelyn Johnson finished seventh in the high jump with a clearance of 1.75m. First on the track, Corey Randall nearly won the steeplechase, falling at the final water barrier before regaining her composure to finish the race and take third overall (10:23.71). She was followed across the line by Anna Masinelli (5th at 10:28.45) and Brooke Bennett (7th at 10:34.57). In the final race of the day, the 10,000m run, Amy Hastings took second place (35:32.69) while Ali Kielty (3rd in 35:49.38) and Jenna Kingma (5th in 35:52.70) rounded out the scoring.
Just like last year, the Sun Devils scored big points in several events to take their lead, this time led by 18 points scored in both the 10,000m run and the shot put while the discus produced 17 points.
In other action on the day, several preliminary heats were run on the track with Sun Devils advancing to the finals on Sunday. For the women, Jack Mann (10th) in the 1,500m run and Marquis Profit in both the 110m hurdles (seventh) and 400m hurdles (ninth).
Action concludes Sunday at Stanford with the field events opening the day at 10 a.m. before the running events hit the track at noon. One of the first events in the field will be the women's hammer throw where Stevens will look to become the first athlete to win the hammer, shot put and discus in the same year in the history of the Pac-10.