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May 19, 2006 > Sports > Wright ties high jump record, Owls finish a distant third at C-USA

Wright ties high jump record, Owls finish a distant third at C-USA

By Stephen Whitfield | Thresher Editorial Staff

Despite a host of top-three finishes, personal-best times and a school-record performance, the men’s track and field team finished a distant third place at the Conference USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships May 11-13 in El Paso.

Sophomore Omar Wright tied a Rice record in the high jump, and senior Ryan Walsh automatically qualified for the NCAA Championships in the decathlon by winning the event.

The University of Texas-El Paso won the meet, dominating in both the sprints and the jumps to score 225 points and top the University of Houston’s 218.5 points. Rice was the only other team to score more than 100 points, finishing with 104.5. Head coach Jon Warren (Jones ‘88) said many Owls had a successful meet.

“We felt that if we had a decent meet we would be third place,” Warren said. “If we can put some things together with some more bodies, we’ll have a shot to win in the future, but as far as the people that were there this weekend, we had a phenomenal meet.”

Junior Pablo Solares won the 1,500 meters, setting a new conference record with a time of 3 minutes, 44.3 seconds. Solares also raced a third-place 1:50.4 in the 800 and ran the anchor leg of the 4x400 relay team, which placed fourth with a time of 3:14.30.

Sophomore Charles Hampton placed third in the 3,000 steeplechase, fourth in the 10,000 and sixth in the 5,000. Sophomore Tyler Whitham ran a personal-best 14.40 in the 110 hurdles to finish third and cleared a personal-best 16 feet, 0.75 inches to finish second in the pole vault. Whitham finished two spots ahead of freshman Curtis Porter, who came out of nowhere to vault 15-1.

The Owls’ best performances were in the jumping events. Senior Jason Powell finished second in the triple jump, posting a wind-aided mark of 53-0.25, currently the seventh-best outdoor mark in the country. Junior Devon Fanfair finished one spot behind Powell, leaping 51-0.75. Fanfair also jumped 23-4 in the long jump to place sixth. The most noteworthy performance in the jumps, however, came from Wright, who cleared 7-2.25 to finish second in the high jump and tie the Rice record set by Chad Kopp (Brown ‘96) in 1995.

Wright is one of five Owls who will compete in the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships in Austin May 26. This will be Wright’s second trip to the regional meet. Last season, he surprisingly qualified at the Dogwood Invitational in late April after missing the entire year with an ankle injury. This season, Wright is one of the favorites to advance to the NCAA Championships in June. His high jump at C-USA is currently the seventh-best mark in the region. Wright said he has a much more competitive outlook heading into regionals this year.

“Hopefully, I’ll make top-five or at least top-eight in a worst-case scenario, but I would say that I’m definitely a lot more confident because I’m jumping a lot higher,” Wright said. “Last year, I was on really short notice. I had only done three competitions, and I was just thinking, ‘I want to do my best.’ This year … I’m going there to compete and to win.”

One Rice athlete who will not have to worry about the regional meet is Walsh, who automatically qualified for nationals by scoring 7,196 points in the decathlon. Walsh, who also won the heptathlon at the C-USA Indoor Championships, set personal bests in five events en route to a 241-point victory over second-place Jarrett Flax of UH.

Walsh’s total score was also a personal best, 419 points better than the 6,777 he scored to win the Western Athletic Conference outdoor title last year. With his collegiate career coming to a close, Walsh said he approached the C-USA meet with a greater sense of urgency.

“I really did feel different because, since this was the last meet, I felt like I couldn’t leave anything on the track,” Walsh said. “Going into the 100, I just knew it was my last time to do everything … so I gave it that much more effort. The funny thing is now I have one more meet.”

As a team, Rice could not have expected to score much higher than it did. As with the indoor season, the Owls did not have the depth or the individual talent to match up with UTEP and UH, two teams expected to compete for the NCAA team title this year. Because of less strict recruiting standards, the Miners generally seek older foreign transfers, like Mickael Hanany, who received the High Point award at the C-USA meet by winning the high jump, long jump and triple jump. The Cougars also have a built-in advantage with their large roster. UH can usually enter far more athletes in any given event than other schools, and this allows them to accumulate a lot of points without a lot of strong individual finishes.

With these trends likely to continue, Warren said the Owls cannot use them as excuses if they want to compete for C-USA titles in the future.

“We cannot overcome seven pole vaulters, nor can we overcome the fact that we cannot recruit UTEP’s kids,” Warren said. “We just have some more limitations. As coaches, we have to do a better job of taking the kids that we have and making them more focused.”

End of article

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