August 2001 Issue

Ryun's Records Gone
by Jon Hendershott
Eugene, May 27-The day before they were to meet in the Prefontaine Classic mile, Hicham El Guerrouj glanced a few feet to his right and said of Alan Webb, "He has the look of a champion."

Told of El G's assessment, the freshfaced high schooler only flashed his toothy grin and shook his head slightly as if to say, "The World Record holder said that about me?"

The Moroccan obviously knows not only how a champion looks, but also how one performs-and the 11,221 fans packed into reduced-seating Hayward Field witnessed champion-caliber efforts that put both El G and Webb into the history books.

El Guerrouj flowed to a 3:49.92, the fastest outdoor mile ever run in the U.S. He clipped nearly a full second off the 3:50.86 set in '96 by Noureddine Morceli in the dedication meet at Atlanta's Olympic Stadium.

Then there was Webb. The Reston, Virginia, student showed poise and grit belying his 18 years as he sprinted home, the stadium rocking to an incessant roar, to clock 3:53.43 and shatter Jim Ryun's 36-year-old High School Record of 3:55.3.

A homestretch before he succeeded Ryun as recordman, Webb had flashed past the 1500 post in 3:38.26 to better an even older Ryun standard, 3:39.0 from '64.

Fittingly, El Guerrouj grabbed Webb's left hand to tow the youngster with him on a victory lap as the crowd roared its admiration. If the word "magic" could describe a track event, this was it.

Webb was remarkably relaxed the day before the big race, but gave an idea of his attitude when asked if was tired of hearing the season-long comparisons with Ryun, especially after his 3:59.86 indoors made him the first prep miler under 4:00 in 34 years.

"Hey, 3:59 indoors isn't fast," he replied with no trace of pretension. "I can run a lot faster than that."

Said Scott Raczko, Webb's coach at South Lakes High, "Alan has a great head on his shoulders. He handles everything very well."

As the large, 15-runner field lined up just behind the curved starting stripe… more in the August issue

Two Titanic Team Battles At NCAA
by Garry Hill
Eugene, Oregon, May 30-June 2-Although statistics are a crucial element in the enjoyment of track & field, fortunately they're not the be-all, end-all.

If they were, fans might have come away from the NCAA Championships thinking they hadn't seen much of a meet. Instead, the opposite was true, as edition LXXX had as much drama and excitement as any collegiate championships in recent memory.

No, there were no significant records set, impact on the all-time lists was negligible and the yearly lists weren't seriously revised. But who cared?
For four days some of the nation's most hard-core fans were treated to race after exciting race and thrilling jump/throw after thrilling jump/throw. And to top it all off, almost every event was relevant to two enthralling team-championship competitions.

Neither of the favorites was able to win, both TCU's men and UCLA's women having to take a back seat to their top challengers, Tennessee and USC. The tales of the demise of the two pre-meet choices unfolded in opposite manners… more in the August issue

Event-By Event Coverage Of NCAA Championships
In the August issue of T&FN you'll find something that no other magazine can deliver: a story on every event contested at the national collegiate championships. Not just distance races, not just running events. All the running events, all the jumps and all the throws. And the multis, and the team-battle stories. All written by the most informed group of track experts on the planet. Check it out.

Gatlin Sprints Power Vols
by Jon Hendershott
Tennessee coach Bill Webb shakes his head slightly and smiles a bemused smile: "Who would have guessed at the start of this meet that the high-point man would be a frosh?"

But that frosh was Webb's own Justin Gatlin, the 6-1/160 yearling from Florida who sprinted like a veteran at age 19 to pace his squad to its first team win in a decade. Tennessee got a big 36-point chunk from its sprint corps as Gatlin won both the 100 and 200 (the first frosh to do so since Auburn's Harvey Glance in '76) and handled the second leg on the runner-up 4x1.

As Webb muses, "Who would have thought we would score 15 points in the 100-without Leonard [Scott]?" After Scott shocked by being eliminated in the semis, Gatlin and fellow frosh Sean Lambert rushed in to fill the breech.

The coach adds, still smiling, "I'm just glad they're on my team and nobody else's."

The soft-voiced Gatlin admits, "This hasn't sunk in yet. I just thank God for what He has done for me. For letting me win both races to do the double and put some points on the board for our team."

It would also surprise most fans to learn that the first dash double by an American since… more in the August issue

Berryhill Runs From Front
by Sieg Lindstrom
Bryan Berryhill's NCAA 1500 win in a PR 3:37.05 was a race run according to plan. It was also a race run according to visions-those of both Berryhill himself and Colorado State coach Del Hessel.

Says Berryhill, whose prep career at Crater High of Central Point, Oregon, had reached its highest highs at Hayward Field, "I looked at the schedule a long time ago, and I knew my last NCAA meet would be here on this track. I truly wanted to come here and run at Oregon, but that didn't work out. So, I couldn't dream of a better ending to my collegiate track career than to win here in front of my family and friends."

Hessel's plan had been to transform Berryhill from the 400/800 runner who won five State high school titles on the Oregon track to a miler who could win an NCAA title on the same oval.

"I really was not sure that he had the speed… more in the August issue

Utahans High Jump To 1-2
by Sieg Lindstrom
Charles Clinger is 6-9, a '99 World Championships team member, the NCAA Indoor titlist and a 7-81/2 high jumper who was slightly disappointed that he didn't clear a higher bar in winning the outdoor crown.

Dave Hoffman is 6-2 (11/4 inches shorter than his high school PR), with a previous career-high NCAA finish of =11th, and an athlete ecstatic to have equaled his PR then broken it twice placing 2nd in the collegiate nationals.

But the two seniors have much in common. Both are from Utah schools-Clinger Weber State and Hoffman Utah State-and both interrupted their collegiate careers to serve two-year missions for the Mormon Church.

Hoffman, now 26 and married, spent '94-'96 in Venezuela. The 24-year-old Clinger, who is also married… more in the August issue

Stiegeler A Duck Now
by Sieg Lindstrom
Oregon, the NCAA host team looking to return to national-title contention, has long traded on scoring recruits who dream in green and yellow of winning at Hayward Field. Because of the Duck tradition, track has a higher profile in and around Eugene than in other parts of the world.

It's a little ironic, then, that javelin thrower John Stiegeler, Oregon's first NCAA champion since fellow spearchucker Art Skipper in '92, began his college career at arch-rival Oregon State, a school just up the road that no longer even competes in the sport.

Math major Stiegeler (pronounced Stig-ler) is in many ways a quintessential Duck. He's the frank-speaking son of a contractor from Coos Bay, the coastal town that spawned Steve Prefontaine. He placed 3rd in the State for Pre's alma mater… more in the August issue

Williams Sets USC Women's Tone
by Sieg Lindstrom
Ron Allice's eyes moistened a bit and his words came ever so haltingly as he stood on the Hayward Field grass and pondered USC's first team title for women or men in 26 years. Allice's emotion-a readily apparent blend of joy, pride and awe-heightened even further when 100 champion Angela Williams' name came up, as the victorious coach knew it would.

"Angie is the team captain," Allice said. "I don't have to tell you what she has meant to this program. It's more than being a three-time NCAA champion and setting history. It's what Angie brings to the program in terms of her spirit by example. And she doesn't have to say a lot of things. She does it. She's a class act. A coach and a program is very, very fortunate to have an Angela Williams once in their coaching career. Just once."

After 38 seasons of coaching, 7 of them at USC, Southern California native Allice had guided delivery of the first-ever NCAA women's crown for a program that in years past won 26 men's trophies, the most recent under Vern Wolfe in '76.

Allice is a veteran's veteran, but as the uniqueness of three straight NCAA 100 titles attests, no coach, regardless of tenure in the trenches, comes across many athletes like Angela Williams.

After finishing just 4 points behind LSU last year, then dropping high-profile dual and Pac-10 titles to arch-rival UCLA this season, it was not lost on Allice that Williams' individual campaign had followed a parallel course to that of her team. With parallel climactic results.

"Remember, she did not win a collegiate race until she came to this meet," Allice said. "Did not win a dual meet… more in the August issue

Glenn's Unique Double
by Jon Hendershott
Don't ever tell Brianna Glenn she's done competing, especially in a championship meet.

Arizona associate coach Fred Harvey had dispatched sprint assistant Dawn Mortensen to the side of the 21-year-old Wildcat junior at the start of the Pac-10 meet's final day.

"Brianna bruised her left hamstring in the long jump," recalls Harvey. "I was scared for her to sprint on Sunday so I sent Dawn to tell her I didn't think she should compete."

Glenn's reply was definitive: "You're not taking me out of any event. Nothing is going to stop me now." Glenn then clicked off a double sprint victory.

That same gritty competitiveness carried the marketing honor student into the NCAA history books in Eugene, as she became the first ever to score a 200/long jump double. In between, she sped to 3rd in the 100.

"It was exciting to win the long jump then… more in the August issue

Two More World Records For Dragila
by Jon Hendershott
Stanford, California, June 9-For the third time this season vault master Stacy Dragila raised her own WR twice in the same meet. This time she produced clearances of 15-51/2 (4.71) and 15-91/4 (4.81) at the Peregrine Systems U.S. Open.

No man has ever had a double-record meet more than once in a season, and the last time a pairing happened was Dutch Warmerdam in '41.

Dragila's latest double upped the outdoor best from the 15-5 she cleared in late April. After electrifying the SRO crowd of 5375 with the pair of records-the seventh and eighth outdoor bests of her career and 15th and 16th overall-the 30-year-old Olympic champion took three respectable shots at 16-0 (4.88). Coming closest on her initial attempt, Dragila got over the historic setting before her arms dislodged the bar.

The day before the meet, Dragila had said, "I'm a competitor. I'll go for the World Record every chance I can. The more I try it, the more comfortable I get with it."

She cleared on her first tries at… more in the August issue

Anatomy Of 9000-Point Milestone
by Ed Gordon
Götzis, Austria, May 26-27-Roman Sebrle didn't follow the usual pattern as he produced an unlooked-for decathlon World Record 9026 at the Hypomeeting.

In becoming the first to crack the 9000-point barrier, the 27-year-old Czech's performances included only three personal bests and one equal-PR. By comparison, supplanted recordholder Tomás Dvorák logged five lifetime bests before falling just 6 points short of the magic 9000 level en route to his 8994 two years ago. What the Sydney silver medalist managed to do was nearly always be close to his PR.

Sebrle's by-event story… more in the August issue

Golden West's Wind
by Jack Shepard & Mike Kennedy
Sacramento, California, June 9-Don't be fooled by the slow times for sprinters and hurdlers at the 42nd Golden West Invitational. Raw marks don't reflect how great their performances were, as they ran into winds that in some cases reached almost 25mph.

But as always the grand-daddy of all prep post-season classics produced a wealth of fine marks… more in the August issue

Two National High School Records At Cal State
by Mike Kennedy
Sacramento, June 1-2-Two national records, one expected and the other a pleasant surprise, highlighted the California State women's meet.

A week before, Long Beach Wilson had let an opportunity to break the 4 x 400 stanard slip away when, needing just a 55-second anchor, the Bruins could only come up with a 57.

Here, after Angel Tate opened up with a 55.6 and Quian Hodges followed with a 55.5, Lashinda Demus put the hammer down with a 50.4, the fastest split ever in high school competition, and Wilson found itself in a familiar situation-in need of a 55 anchor to break the record. This time Ashley Freeman left no doubt, running 54.2 to finish a 3:35.72 that broke Wilson's own record of 3:36.32 set in '98.

Although senior vaulter Shayla Balentine (Morro Bay) has not received oodles of publicity… more in the August issue

Webb Relays Sub-4:00 At National Scholastic
by Pete Cava
Raleigh, North Carolina, June 15-17-Nasty winds had a negative effect at the Golden West and the weather was even less friendly the next week. A torrential downpour midway through Saturday's events transformed the adidas National Scholastic Invitational from its scheduled 2-day format into a 3-day affair.

But the deluge didn't prevent record-setting runs by three relay teams, with the big headline being a sub-4:00 anchor for Alan Webb… more in the August issue

oMarion Jones: "I read a petition being circulated… more in the August issue

We Think: NCAA Format Still Flawed
As we said in this issue's opening story, the NCAA "had as much drama and excitement as any collegiate championships in recent memory." Year in and year out, the collegiate nationals remains one of the most intriguing meets on the planet. How could it not with its unbeatable mix of compelling team-scoring plotlines and exciting youngsters doing things neither they nor we ever dreamed they could do?

The meet is so good, in fact, we think, that it's too easy for those who plot the meet to lose track of how good the meet used to be for the fans, and what a pale imitation the current version has become. The problem, we suspect, is that those in charge of scripting the NCAA are like those who script most meets, which means that they rarely-if ever-actually sit in the stands and watch the product from a fan's point of view.

The meet's fatal flaws are only two in number, but that's enough. If you're a running fan… more in the August issue

From The Editor: A U.S. Renaissance Underway?
Post-Olympic years are frequently known for their lack of life; a general blandness as the torch passes from one set of heroes to another. Guess what? There's no Sydney hangover on these shores. I hate to go overboard, but would it be premature for me to declare that we're actually seeing a renaissance for track & field in the United States?

I don't think so. Not only are American fans reveling in a vintage year, I've also seen far more emotion (gasp! no cheering in the pressbox!) from those charged with covering the sport. The media is noticing us, and they're liking it. The buzz is about exciting performers, not dreadful tales of drug abuse.

We've got people making news in events that the sporting public-not just track fans-hold dear, and even better, the people making the news tend to be engaging personalities who work well with the media and love to mix it up with the general public. Let me cite some conspicuous examples of those who are raising the sport's domestic profile… more in the August issue