Sports Editor:
Adam Jude
adamjude@dailyemerald.com
Thursday, May 30,2002
Best Bet
MLB: Seattle at Baltimore
4p.m., FSN
NCAA Championships
Courtesy Washington State Media Services
Becky Holliday, shown here at the Pac-10 Championships in Pullman, Wash., earned Oregon six
points at the NCAA Championships when she placed third in the pole vault.
UO pole vaulter Holliday
finishes third at NCAAs
■ With a six-point finish, Becky Holliday
becomes the highest scoring Oregon athlete in
the pole vault since Niki Reed took fifth in 1999
By Hank Hager
Oregon Daily Emerald
In the 2001 NCAA Championships at Hayward
Field, Oregon finished a disappointing 60th place
with only two overall points, both supplied by
Sarah Malone’s seventh place finish in the javelin.
Becky Holliday just took care of the 2002 ver
sion for the Oregon women’s track and field team.
The Oregon junior, in her first season compet
ing for head coach Tom Heinonen’s squad,
placed third Wednesday at the 2002 NCAA
Championships in the pole vault. The finish
earned Oregon six points, good enough to triple
last year’s total.
And the squad still has four more athletes to go.
Holliday, whose top height this season was 14
feet, 1 and 1/4 inches, finished her day in Baton
Rouge, La., at a disappointing 13-05 1/4.
However, with the top finisher — UCLA’s Tracy
O’Hara — winning at a height of 13-09.25, it was
not the best of days for the pole vault contingent
down in the Bayou.
“I had a bad day on the wrong day,” Holliday
said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening,
clearly disappointed with her finish. “I felt great.
It was just that my rhythm was totally off. I just did
not feel good on the runway.”
The transfer from Clackamas Community Col
lege passed at heights of 12-03.50 and 12-09.50 be
fore clearing 13-01.50 on her first try.
She missed her first two tries'at 13-05.25, but
cleared it on her final attempt. However, that
would be the last time Holliday would clear the
bar in an Oregon uniform this season. She missed
three tries at 13-09.25, a height that would have
tied her with O’Hara for the top spot.
Liberty’s Andrea Wildrick missed her attempt at
13-09.25 in a playoff againt O’Hara, thus Wildrick
finished in second place.
“I just had much better expectations for myself,”
Holliday said. “I just think I put too much pressure
on myself.”
NCAA
Women’s
Standings
(After Day 1}
1. UCLA 15
2. C!emson 10
3. N.C. State 10
4. Nebraska 8
4. liberty 8
4. Colorado 8
4. South Florida 8
8. Oregon 6
8. Idaho State 6
8. Yale 6
vaulter in the NCAA.
If there was a silver lin
ing, though, it was that
O’Hara, and not Arizona’s
Amy Linnen took the title.
O’Hara, has now won two
NCAA titles — her first
coming in 2000 — while
Linnen, a sophomore at Ari
zona, failed to earn a height.
“I was really happy for
her,” Holliday said of
O’Hara, a close friend. “I’m
glad she won it in her sen
ior year.”
Next season, Holliday
will be that senior looking
for the title. She will also be
the second-ranked pole
“I guess I’m looking forward to next year,” she
said.
Ducks’ Javelin trio next up
With Holliday already coming through with a
third-place performance, Oregon’s attention now
turns to the javelin.
Sophomore Sarah Malone and freshmen Elisa
Crumley and Roslyn Lundeen head to the Baton
Rouge, all ranked in the top 12 in the nation.
While Malone is used to the big-time spotlight
that is placed on the NCAA Championships,
Crumley and Lundeen will be experiencing it first
hand for the first time. But that doesn’t necessarily
mean they will wilt under the intense scrutiny.
Turn to NCAA, page 14
Oregon men miss marks on first day of NCAA Championships
■ Simon Kimata fails to advance
in the 800, while Adam Kriz can’t
break the top 10 in the hammer
By Peter Hockaday
Oregon Daily Emerald
The Oregon men’s track team entered
the NCAA Championships with high
hopes, but at least some of those hopes
came crashing to the ground with the
weight of a hammer on Wednesday.
Only two Ducks were in action at the
first day of the national meet, and both
of those athletes suffered disappoint
ment. Simon Kimata, ranked third in
the 800-meter race heading into the
NCAAs, finished fourth in his prelimi
nary heat on Wednesday and missed
the finals. Adam Kriz had slightly lower
expectations — he was ranked 13th in
the hammer heading into the meet —
but he threw short of his personal best
and finished 14th.
“Through the competition I was up
for it, I was relaxed, I wasn’t nervous,”
Kriz said. “I was throwing it as far as I
could, it just wasn’t going anywhere.”
But the biggest disappointment on
Wednesday belonged to Kimata. The sen
ior was hampered by injury that kept him
out of the Pacific-10 Conference Champi
onships and NCAA meet in 2001, then he
came back strong this season. He ran a
personal best of 1:46.65 in March, then
won thePac-10 title in 1:48.35.
■ 'Bur ar the ~NCAA: meet; Kimata’s '
NCAA Results
(After Day 1}
800-meter preliminaries, Heat 2
1. Jonathan Johnson, Texas Tech,
1:46.55*
2. Sam Burley, Pennsylvania, 1:46,88*
3. Marc Sylvester, Tennessee, 1:47.00*
4. Simon Kimata, Oregon, 1:48.17
Hammer finals
1. Andras Haklits, Georgia, 253-8
2. Libor Charfreitag, SMU, 252-7
3. Carey Ryan, DePaul, 225-3
14. Adam Kriz, Oregon, 200-7
* made finals
1:48.17 only earned him fourth in a fast
heat. The top two athletes from each
heat advanced, and then the next two
fastest from all the heats combined. Ki
mata ended up 11th in the rankings,
missing the finals by only 0.25 seconds.
“It was very humid out there,” Kima
ta said. “I had nothing to do except
push hard.”
Kriz also said the heat got him a little
bit. But on Wednesday night, Kriz still
couldn’t put a finger on why he could
n’t crack the hammer’s top 10.
“It’s still too fresh,” said Kriz, a jun
ior. “Probably next week I’ll be able to
tell you (how it happened). Hopefully
it’s a good learning experience that I can
build on for next year.”
Kriz’s best throw on Wednesday
was his third, which went 200 feet, 7
inches. At the Pac-10 meet two weeks
ago, Kriz threw 210-7 to win the con
ference title. If he had uncorked that
kind of throw Wednesday, Kriz would
have finished eighth.
“It’s another big meet, and the more
big meets you go to, the better you do in
the next big meet,” Kriz said. “It’s good
to get that experience under my belt, and
hopefully next year I’ll be in a better po
sition coming in, but I’ll be more relaxed
because I know what’s going on here.”
Today, three more Ducks will try to
redeem Kimata’s and Kriz’ performanc
es, Nick Bakke was the last javelin
thrower to make the NCAA meet, so he
has nothing to lose in this afternoon’s
javelin competition.
Two other Ducks will have higher ex
pectations. Micah Harris, ranked ninth
in the 110 hurdles, needs to finish high
in today’s preliminary heat in order to
advance to Friday’s semifinal and Sat
urday’s final. Oregon sophomore Jason
Hartmann will be one of the last ath
letes to compete today when he takes
the track for the 10,000 this evening.
Hartmann is ranked 10th in his event.
Looking ahead to Friday’s action, Billy
Pappas will be in action in the first five
decathlon events, and Harris could be in
action if he advances in the hurdles.
E-mail sports reporter Peter Hockaday
atpeterhockaday@dailyemerald.com.