Sooner Track & Field Sends Competitors to Texas A&M

March 18, 2003

NORMAN, Okla. - With three All-Americans added at the NCAA Indoor meet, the Sooner track and field teams are switching gears, preparing as a team for their second outdoor meet. Chaunda Allard and Dan Strong will open competition Thursday, March 20, in the A&M Combined while the rest of the team will compete in the College Station Relays on Saturday, March 22.

Allard, Strong and co-head coach Jill Lancaster took advantage of spring break on the Norman campus and left Monday to train prior to the competition. The rest of the team, plus co-head coach Rodney Price and throws coach Ed Wade, will head south on Wednesday for two days of training prior to the competition.

A total of 28 Sooners will be competing this weekend as the Sooner coaches stagger the start of the season for the squads. With the addition of a regional qualifying meet for the NCAA Outdoor, the season has been extended by two weeks, pushing the start date back for several Sooners. Some will begin competing March 29 at the UTA Invitational while others won't begin competition until the Texas Relays the first weekend of April.

Events Schedule
There are three divisions in the decathlon and Strong will compete in the silver division. His competition will open at 3 p.m. on Thursday with the 100-meter dash. Other first day events include the long jump, shot put, high jump and 400 meter with the final event set to start at 9:15 p.m. The second day's events will start at 1:30 p.m. with the 110-meter high hurdles. The remainder of events for that day will be the discus, the pole vault, the javelin and the 1500-meter run.

There are two divisions in the women's heptathlon and it isn't know yet which division Allard will be competing in. The heptathlon opens with the 100-meter hurdles at either 1 p.m. (bronze division) or 4 p.m. (gold division). The remaining first day events include the high jump, shot put and 200 meter with the final event set for 5/8 p.m. The second day features the long jump, javelin and 800 meter.

The Relays open at 11 a.m. Saturday with the women's long jump, men's long jump, men's high jump, women's javelin, women's hammer and women's pole vault. Field events will continue throughout the afternoon while running event finals (heats against time) will start at noon with the women's 3000-meter steeplechase. The final running event is the men's 1600-meter relay and it is scheduled to begin at 6:05 p.m.

NCAA Indoor Recap
The Sooners returned from Fayetteville with three more All-Americans. LaVerne Jones earned All-America honors in the 60 and 200, the first time since 1982 that a Sooner woman had earned All-America honors in two individual events in one meet. She also established new school records in the 60 and the 200 in preliminary action. Freshman DaBryan Blanton tied for eighth in the prelims of the 60 with a school record 6.66. The tie was broken by the thousandth second and he missed qualifying by .006 seconds. He still earned All-America honors as one of the top eight American finishers in the event. Aldwyn Sappleton finished 16th in the 800 after battling breathing problems the final half of the race.

The North Texas Invitational
Kyle Bookout gave early indications that he is back to 100 percent after posting an NCAA regional qualifying mark of 171-0 in the discus at the North Texas Invitational last Friday. Bookout was second in that event. Senior Megan Crystal won the women's shot put and finished fourth in the discus while Dan Strong registered personal bests in the discus and javelin. Katie Blue was third in the shot and sixth in the discus; Renea' Burns opened her Sooner career with a second place finish in the javelin with a 129-2, the seventh best all-time mark in school history; and Chaundra Allard was fourth in the javelin.

Up Next
The Sooners will compete in the UTA Invitaitonal in Arlington on Saturday, March 29.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

Sooner Track & Field Sends Competitors to Texas A&M

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