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Track and Field
at Battle on the Bayou
University of Oklahoma Athletics
Sooners Fight for National Indoor Titles
March 09, 2006 | Track and Field
NORMAN, Okla. -- Seven University of Oklahoma athletes will compete at the 2006 NCAA National Indoor Track & Field Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., March 10-11.
Yolanda Goff (60-meter dash), Chip Heuser (pole vault), Ronnie Pines (60) and the women's distance medley relay (Catherine Odell, Tijahnni Newton, Kristi Cook and Jessica Eldridge) will all attempt to earn All-America status and chance at an individual national championship.
Live results will be available at www.flashresults.com.
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Getting to Know the Sooner Coaching Staff
Martin Smith was announced as Oklahoma's sixth head track & field coach on June 30, 2005, and quickly assembled impressive staff of assistants to usher in the new era of Sooner track & field.
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Who to Watch ...Women's Distance Medley Relay
Fresh off a victory at the Big 12 Indoor Championships, the women's distance medley relay squad of Catherine Odell, Tijahnni Newton, Kristi Cook and Jessica Eldridge aims at becoming All-Americans in Fayetteville this weekend.
The quartet broke the previous school record, set in 2004, by over 15 seconds when they placed fourth at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational at The Armory in Manhattan, N.Y., on Feb. 3. Their time of 11:14.63 was the first provisional qualifying mark ever for an OU women's DMR.
Oklahoma's DMR is the eighth-seeded team entering the national championships.
The group will be riding high as all did well individually at the conference championships.
Eldridge won the mile run, Odell placed third in the 1000-meter run, Newton took sixth in the 400 and Cook finished seventh in the 800.
Those efforts helped the women's team to a program best fourth-place overall finish.
New Fastest man to be Crowned
OU's DaBryan Blanton will not be defending his back-to-back NCAA Indoor 60-meter dash national titles, meaning the entire field should feel lucky about this weekend.
Blanton, who turned professional after his junior season in 2005, dominated the 60 the past two seasons. He won the 2004 national title after running 6.59 in the finals and was just a hair quicker at 6.58 the following year.
Ronnie Pines, who enters the meet seeded No. 2, will be Oklahoma's lone hope to retain one of the most coveted titles in collegiate sport.
Next on the Calendar
The Sooners spend next week on Spring Break before splitting between the Baylor Invitational in Waco, Texas, and Jim Click Shootout in Tucson, Ariz., on March 25.
In the Polls
Two of the Sooners' national championship entries are ranked in Trackwire.com's Dandy Dozen.
The women's distance medley relay is listed No. 8 and junior pole vaulter Chip Heuser is ranked No. 9
Big 12 Leftovers
The OU women's track and field team recorded its best ever score, 61 points, and finish, tied for fourth, at the Big 12 Indoor Championships. The OU women placed 11th in 2005 with 21.5 points.
The OU women won two events at the Big 12 Indoor for the first time in history with the help of Jessica Eldridge, who won the mile run on Saturday after anchoring the distance medley relay win on Friday. The Sooner women had previously won only three event titles total at the meet (Staneisha Bell, 60-meter dash, 2000; Janel Hayes, long jump, 2001; and Leslie Dunlap, pole vault, 2002).
The women's DMR win was OU's first conference relay title since the DMR won the Big Eight Indoor Championship in 1994. The OU DMR had also won indoor conference titles in 1981, 1991 and 1992.
Eldridge's 12.5 points was the third best effort by a Sooner woman in the 10-year history of the Big 12 Indoor. Laverne Jones scored 16 from runner-up finishes in the 60- and 200-meter dashes in 2004 and 14 from a runner-up in the 60 and third in the 200 in 2003.
In 2006, seven men's and seven women's entries have surpassed the provisional qualifying standard. Only five Sooners were eligible to compete for the 2005 NCAA Indoor Championships.
The OU men, who returned only 21 points from the 2005 Big 12 Indoor team, scored 40 en route to a 10th-place overall finish.
The 2005 men scored 67.33 points from 35 entries, including two relays (1.92 points per entry). The 2006 men scored its 40 points from just 14 entries (2.86 per entry).
Nine of OU's 10 men who participated scored points in 2006. Last year, 12 of 25 Sooner men scored points.
The 2005 women scored 21.5 points from 32 entries (0.67 per entry). The 2006 women scored 61 from 17 entries (3.59 per entry).
Eight of OU's 12 women scored points in 2006. Three of the four who did not were true freshmen. In 2005, 10 of 20 athletes, including two relays, scored points. Without the relays, only four OU women would have scored points.
Four women who did not score in an individual event in 2005 Odell, Rimmer, Newton and Goff combined for 21 points in individual events in 2006. Odell and Newton also ran legs on the winning DMR.
Tijahnni Newton improved the most individually between 2005 and 2006. Last year, Newton was 18th overall in the women's 400-meter dash after running a 1:01.47 in her preliminary heat. This year, she finished second in her heat with a personal best 55.08 run and placed sixth overall.
By event, the women's horizontal jumps improved the most over last year's group. In 2005, zero points were scored from a combined six athletes in the women's long and triple jumps. In 2006, OU's three athletes in the horizontal jumps combined for 21 points, including Toni Smith's second-place leap in the triple and Portia Nash's third in the long jump.
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Jessica Eldridge had one of the most outstanding performances in OU women's track and field history at the Big 12 Indoor Championships.
The junior from Broken Arrow, Okla., anchored the women's distance medley relay on Friday to a five-second victory over Baylor, which entered the meet ranked No. 1 in the conference.
Saturday, Eldridge ran smart and strong in her victory in the women's mile run.
“I wanted to be smart and have confidence in myself in the race,” Eldridge said. “The conference championship was a goal I set and accomplished. I never underestimate my competition, and I think it was a good field.”
The Sooner scored 12.5 points -- 10 for the mile win and a 2.5 share for the DMR victory. She tied for sixth among individual scorers at the meet.
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Run Ronnie Run
Ronnie Pines is making a quick impact among the Sooners' sprint corps.
The junior college transfer owned the fastest collegiate time in the nation for 20 days after he ran 6.60 the 60-meter dash on Feb. 4 at the J.D. Martin Invitational in Norman.
His mark has only been beaten by Baylor's Jacob Norman, who ran 6.58 during the preliminary rounds of the Big 12 Indoor.
Pines' run broke his own meet record and two-time national champion DaBryan Blanton's facility record.
Pines, who placed sixth at the Big 12 meet, holds the No. 2 seed entering the final weekend of the season.
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Chip on his Shoulder
After breaking his wrist and missing the entire 2005 season, sophomore pole vaulter Chip Heuser is ready to deliver on what is expecting to be a promising collegiate career.
Heuser, the 2004 USA Junior National champion, won the season-opening Arkansas Invitational after clearing 17-6.50 (5.35 meters), an NCAA provisional qualifying mark.
While attempting to clear a height of over 17 feet at the National Pole Vault Summit (Jan. 18), Heuser was so high he actually kicked the bar off its supports with his foot.
He jumped a season best 17-8.50 (5.40 meters) en route to winning the event at the J.D. Martin Invitational and placed second at the Big 12 Indoor Championships with a jump of 17-7.00 (5.36).
The Louisville, Ky., native finished 13th at the 2004 NCAA Indoor Championships aftering clearing 16-10.5.
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Odell Coming of Age
If you need one sure thing, count of Catherine Odell. Last season, the Enid, Okla., native had no signs of a sophomore slump as she became OU's most improved distance runner and qualified for the national outdoor championships in the 1500-meter run.
After redshirting during the cross country season while getting used to new head coach Martin Smith's training program, Odell was on fire to begin 2006, putting the pressure on six-time national qualifier Jessica Eldridge during the first two meets of the season.
She surprised the field when she ran the fastest time during the prelims of the 1,000-meter run, just a short time before running the opening leg of the conference championship-winning distance medley relay.
Odell placed third in the finals, marking quite an improvement over her 12th-place finish in 2005.
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Cooking Up Success
Among the surprising performances to come out of the Razorback Invitational was junior Kristi Cook's sixth-place run in the 800 meters.
Her 2:13.32 run was over three seconds faster than her previous personal best and exactly five seconds better than she ran on the same track one week earlier.
The run put three Sooners in the top six of the 800 at the meet.
She lowered the time to 2:10.64 at the Tyson Invitational on Feb. 11, finishing just .04 seconds back from teammate Jessica Eldridge.
Cook ran the 800-meter leg of OU's distance medley relay at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational on Feb. 3. With its 11:14.63 run, the relay broke the school record by over 15 seconds and ran under the NCAA provisional qualifying standard for the first time in program history.
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Newton's Laws of Motion
Tijahnni Newton battled injuries as a senior at Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., and homesickness as a freshman at OU.
In 2006, however, Newton seems to be gaining her stride as she has improved dramatically in a year's time, recovering the form that made her one of SoCal's hottest prospects.
The sophomore finished sixth in the 400 at the Big 12 Championships, running 55.50 in the finals this season after placing 18th in 1:01.47.
In fact, her season best in 2005 was a meager 58.08. Her worst this season: 56.66, run on a flat oval.
Newton has also spurred the women's distance medley relay to new levels, running the 400-meter second leg. The DMR of Catherine Odell, Newton, Kristi Cook and Jessica Eldridge broke the previous school record set in 2004 by over 15 seconds.
The only member of the 2006 DMR not on the 2004 version? You guessed it...Tijhanni Newton.
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