The Rice Thresher

Location: http://the.ricethresher.org/sports/2007/04/20/womentracktexastwilight

April 20, 2007 > Sports > Women’s track readies for Texas Twilight

Women’s track readies for Texas Twilight

By Dylan Farmer | Thresher Editorial Staff

The women’s track team has consistently been able to count on two things for the past few weeks: bad weather on meet days, and senior Funmi Jimoh’s name in the recap headlines. Jimoh took first place in the long jump Saturday at the Brutus Hamilton Invitational at the University of California at Berkeley, and she was joined by Naquanza Alfred and Susie Barrows. The two juniors won Rice’s two other individual first places in the 800- and 5,000-meters, respectively.

“Now we’re starting to sharpen,” head coach Jim Bevan said. “It’s more about resting and refining right now. Now we’re in a situation where we’re looking for higher quality [practices], and these last few meets are just to sharpen our particular events.”

The Owls have just three more meets before hosting the Conference USA Championships May 10-12 at the Rice Track/Soccer Stadium, starting with the Texas Twilight at Austin tomorrow. Rice then hosts the Rice Twilight on Thursday and finishes the regular season with the Houston Invitational May 5.

The Owls will be looking for their first C-USA title and their first conference championship overall since winning four of five Western Athletic Conference titles from 2000-2004. Bevan said the competition will be stiff between Rice, University of Texas-El Paso and University of Houston.

“UTEP could be better than they were in indoors, and we only beat them by 4.5 points,” Bevan said. “Houston didn’t have the best indoor meet, but I would expect them to have a really good outdoor meet. It could end up boiling down to the last event, but that’s exciting, that’s what you want.”

Rice has managed to stay relatively healthy compared to previous years. Aside from some day-to-day injuries, the Owls have effectively coped with setbacks like junior Marissa Daniels’ strained hamstring earlier this year and have set themselves in a good position in terms of fielding healthy athletes.

“By and large we’re fairly healthy — about 90 percent,” Bevan said. “We have some people a little banged up, but we’re a lot better off of where we were last year … We want to be as healthy as we can.”

Storms in the Berkeley area forced last weekend’s meet to start two hours later than expected, but Jimoh was not bothered. Her jump of 21 feet, 2.5 inches was her second longest of the year but her best for record-keeping purposes. She scored her top jump, a 21-8.75 mark at the Texas Southern Relays March 24, with the help of a 3.0 meters-per-second tailwind — too gusty for the record books under NCAA regulations. After last weekend, Jimoh remained the only Division-I long jumper to leap over 21 feet this season.

Jimoh also contributed a third-place finish in the 100-meter hurdles, running against the wind for a time of 14.60 seconds.

The other sprinters also performed well. Junior Desarie Walwyn was runner-up in the 100-meters and finished third in the 200, recording season-bests of 11.93 and 24.35 seconds, respectively. Fellow junior Chandra Ewing was runner-up in the 400-meter hurdles, a little less than half a second behind Washington’s Syreeta Martin.

The Owls scored well in the middle distance events, led by Alfred’s first place in the 800. She finished in 2:11.97, just in front of junior Lennie Waite, who was third. Waite was also runner-up in the 1,500.

Rice’s long distance performances rounded out the successful individual weekend. Barrows’ lifetime best 17:20.70 in the 5,000 capped the scoring in the California meet, and down the road at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., junior Marissa Daniels took third in the 10,000-meters at the Mt. SAC relays with an NCAA provisional qualifying time of 34:07.04.

“Marissa was in the ideal situation to run the 10,000-meters, and she ran a mark that should get her to the national meet,” Bevan said. “She ran an outstanding race.”

End of article

Back to top