March 21, 2005
Home Meet Information
TEMPE, Ariz. - The third home meet of the 2005 outdoor season awaits the Arizona State University track and field teams this weekend as the Sun Devils play host to the ASU Invitational Saturday at Sun Angel Stadium. The field events open the day at 10 a.m. with the women's hammer throw while running events start at 6 p.m. with the women's 100m hurdles.
MEET THE MEETS
ASU Invitational: The meet features athletes from Air Force, Ashland (Ohio), BYU, Dartmouth, Iowa State and Kansas State, as well as several individual competitors and unattached athletes. Field events open the day with the women's hammer at 10 a.m. while the running events are set to start under the lights at 6 p.m. with the women's 100m hurdles.
Wildcat Combined Events: Participants in the heptathlon (women) and decathlon (men) will compete in Tucson at the Roy P. Drachman Stadium. The first half of both events will be contested Thursday while the remaining portion of the events will be held Friday afternoon. [Meet Information]
Stanford Invitational: Six members of the team will head to Palo Alto, Calif., for the Stanford Invitational to compete in one of the distance events slated for meet running Friday and Saturday. [Meet Information]
LAST WEEK: BALDY CASTILLO MEET [Results]
The Sun Devil men and women played host to their second home meet of the outdoor season and again posted solid results as they combined to win 14 events, place a total of 26 student-athletes among the Top 3 in their respective events, set two school records and post 19 marks good enough for qualification into the NCAA West Region Championships.
REVIEW: 2004 ASU INVITATIONAL [Results]
The Sun Devils picked up 13 victories at the ASU Invitational a year ago with seven coming on the women's side and six from the men. Overall, 14 marks qualified team members for the Pac-10 Championships while six also were good enough for a spot in the NCAA regional meet. The pole vault was the event of the day for the Sun Devils as Brandon Glenn won the event and tied the stadium record at the same time with his clearance of 5.10m. Angela Tavlarides tied her own school record in the pole vault with a clearance of 3.55m.
ALL-AMERICANS
On March 11-12, the NCAA Championships were held in Fayetteville, Ark., with 12 members of the ASU program participating in the national event. When the two-day national meet concluded, four Sun Devils emerged as All-Americans, including Trevell Quinley in the long jump (2nd), Domenik Peterson in the 200m dash (4th) and Brandon Glenn in the pole vault (7th) for the men and Amy Hastings in the 5,000m run (5th) for the women.
LONG JUMP SUCCESS
Arizona State long jumping has seen success in the past year with two solid finishes in competitive meets. Most recently, Trevell Quinley finished second at the NCAA Indoor Championships with a leap of 7.92m (26-00.00) and earned the third All-America honor of his career. Seven months prior to Quinley's performance, former Sun Devil jumper Dwight Phillips captured gold at the Athens Olympics with a mark of 8.59m (28-02.25).
IT'S BEEN A LITTLE WHILE SINCE ...
Brandon Glenn finished seventh in the indoor pole vault competition at the NCAA meet (March 11) to capture his first All-America honor. Glenn's accolade also was the first since 1994 when Nick Hysong captured the national honor. That same year, Glenn was nine years old.
And speaking of Hysong, the 2000 Olympic Gold Medalist competed in the Baldy Castillo Invitational over the weekend and won the event with a clearance of 5.15m. Although the winning mark was not close to his personal best and school record clearances, the result still goes down as a Sun Angel Stadium record, surpassing the 5.10m clearance attained by a trio of men.
A TRIPLE CROWN ... OF SORTS
Amy Hastings is two-thirds of the way toward history following her All-American performance at the NCAA Indoor Championships (March 11) where she placed seventh in the 5,000m run. Prior to the track season, she garnered the accolade in cross country. If she attains All-America honors during this outdoor season, she would do what only one other Sun Devil, male or female, has ever done: earn All-America honors in cross country, indoor and outdoor track in one season.
Lisa Aguilera is the only runner (so far) in school history to pull off the `triple crown' as she earned the national honor in 2000. She finished fifth at the NCAA cross country meet before placing seventh in the indoor mile and 8th in the outdoor 1,500m.
REGIONAL REGISTRATIONS
Following the Baldy Castillo Invitational, the number of regional qualifiers increased to 20 total with nine women and 11 men recording a time or mark that exceeded the standard set forth by the NCAA. By meeting the standards, those Sun Devils have earned a place in the NCAA West Region Championships to be held May 27-28 in Eugene, Ore. Here are the men and women that have qualified so far this year:
Women (9): Jessie McLaughlin (800m), Victoria Jackson (800m), Desiree Davila (1,500m), 4x100m relay, Angela Tavlarieds (pole vault), Jessica Pressley (hammer, shot put and discus) and Jennifer Kowacz (hammer).
Men (11): Lewis Banda (200m), Jason Barton (200m), Seth Amoo (400m), Aaron Aguayo (1,500m), Ryan Warrenburg (1,500m), 4x100m, Ryan Zimmerman (triple jump), Brandon Glenn (pole vault) and Travis Jones (hammer, shot put and discus).
DOING IT DIFFERENT THIS SEASON
Prior to the start of the season, the Pac-10 Conference coaches voted on how student-athletes would qualify for the conference championship meet at the end of each season. Following the vote, it was decided that no standards will be created for an athlete to try and surpass, rather, the head coach of each team selects up to 24 men and up to 24 women to compete at the Pac-10 meet. Athletes can be entered in as many events as the coach sees fit, but no more than eight per school can enter into one event.
JUKEBOX HEROES
A pair of Sun Devils set record marks in the field at the Baldy Castillo Invitational over the weekend with Angela Tavlarides resetting the pole vault standard and Jessica Pressley taking the crown in the hammer. For Tavlarides, her winning clearance of 3.90m marked the fourth time she established the top height in the program's history. Pressley, a redshirt freshman, now holds the mark in the hammer with her winning toss of 58.78m (192-10).
WOULD HAVE BEEN ONLY IF ...
The women's hammer competition also saw Jennifer Kowacz collect a mark of 58.53m (192-00) during the competition. That mark would have become the new standard at ASU had it not been for the throw by Pressley that landed 10 inches further in the field at Sun Angel Stadium
THROWING VERY IM-PRESSLEY
After taking a redshirt season for the outdoor season a year ago, Jessica Pressley has come out throwing this year. Not only does she hold the school record in the hammer, she has recorded NCAA regional qualifying standards in three events; hammer, shot put and discus. Pressley has competed in two outdoor meets this year, throwing in all three events and recorded regional marks in all three at both meets.
KEEPING UP WITH JONES
Travis Jones also is having a stellar start to his outdoor season as he has entered five events in two meets and posted regional qualifying marks in all five. So far, Jones has punched his ticket to Eugene, Ore., in the hammer, shot put and discus.
WOMEN AMONG THE BEST
Just two meets into the outdoor season, 11 women have registered marks good enough for a place among the Top 10 in ASU history. Nine of the marks have come in the field events while two have come on the track. Those two running times came in the steeplechase with Corey Randall and Brooke Bennett claiming the seventh and ninth positions, respectively.
In the field, four marks came in the pole vault with Michelle Johnson and Kristin Schow are tied for fifth. Jessica Pressley posted three marks of her own including the top mark in the hammer, the third-best in the shot put and the seventh-farthest in the discus. The final marks came in the hammer with Jennifer Kowacz ranking second and Sara Shisslak sitting eighth.
WHERE IN THE WORLD?
Two Sun Devils recorded marks over the weekend that have them ranked among the Top 20 in the world this week. Lewis Banda currently owns the 12th-fastest 200m time at 20.84 while Angela Tavlarides sits tied for 16th in the pole vault at 3.90m
NATIONAL RECORD
Last season, Seth Amoo helped the men's 4x400m relay set the NCAA collegiate national record in the indoor version of the race as he and his teammates clocked a 3:03.43 at the Iowa State Last Chance meet. Feb. 11, Amoo, the former school record holder in the 200m dash, set a national record on his own by finishing second in the 200m at the Holiday Inn Team Invitational in 20.95. The time made him the first representative of Ghana to run under 21 seconds, giving the senior the national record.
AND THE AWARD GOES TO ...
On Jan. 29, while the team was not competing, junior All-American and 2004 Olympian Lewis Banda returned to his native Zimbabwe where he was honored as the nation's Sportsman of the Year. Banda, the two-time defending Pac-10 champion at 400m, finished ninth at the Summer Olympiad after helping the Sun Devil men to a tie for 10th at the national meet and anchoring the 2004 NCAA runner-up 4x100m relay team.
ALL RECORDS GO THROUGH JB
Looking over the men's record book for the indoor season, several impressive things standout. One of those is the men's 4x400m relay of Jason Barton, Steve Fitch, Seth Amoo and Domenik Peterson, who stand No. 1 on the lists with a collegiate record 3:03.43. Looking at all five of the top times for the relay event, one name keeps appearing: Jason Barton. In his four years in Tempe, Barton has helped his teammates record the fastest times around while securing All-America honors and conference championships.
TAKING OVER
The indoor men's 200m dash record section looks almost like a shortened version of the team roster as all five ranks are currently occupied by student-athletes on the 2005 team roster. Domenik Peterson leads the group at 20.43 set this season while placing fourth at the NCAA meet.
Seth Amoo (20.95) and Lewis Banda (21.19) are second and fourth, respectively. The marks by Amoo and Banda are the oldest on the current list as both were achieved in the 2003 season. The remaining two marks were both attained in Flagstaff two weeks ago with Kelvin Love (21.15) and Steven Koehnemann (21.24) sitting third and fifth, respectively.
MAROON AND GOLD (MEDAL)
Arizona State was represented by one current and two former student-athletes at the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. Lewis Banda, who is the lone current runner, competed for Zimbabwe in the 400m dash and finished in ninth place, one spot shy of making the finals on the largest stage of athletics.
Although Banda fared well, one former athlete stole the spotlight. Dwight Phillips, the world leader in the long jump for the entire year, did not disappoint as he won the gold medal on his first jump of the competition. His win was the 10th gold medal won by a Sun Devil track and field athlete and also marked the third Summer Olympiad in a row that a former ASU standout returned home with gold after Nick Hysong won the pole vault in 2000 and Maicel Malone helped the 4x400m relay win in Atlanta in 1996.
The final 2004 Olympian with ASU ties was Michael Campbell. Representing Jamaica, Campbell ran in the 4x400m relay, but his team was disqualified in the first round of competition.
NEXT TIME OUT
Following a weekend off from competition, the Sun Devil track and field teams return to action April 6-9 in Austin, Texas, as they are set to compete in the 78th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays.