Van Dalens head to the NCAA leading all the distance events
Stony Brook’s Van Dalen sisters, the New Zealand twins Lucy and Holly, have qualified for the NCAA Division I Championships this weekend at Texas A&M, leading their respective events at the conclusion of the 2011 regular season.
Lucy is No. 1 in the country in the mile (4:32.95) and 3,000 (8:56.77), while Holly is first in the 5,000 (15:56.82) among those races contested on “legal” tracks 200 meters and smaller, such as the Armory’s. (The NCAA, however, accepts performances on larger, “oversize” tracks for the purposes of qualification to the national meet, such as those in Seattle, South Bend, Ind., and Ames, Iowa.)
Athletes also will be traveling to College Station for the Div. I meet, which begins on Friday, from Columbia (Sharay Hale, 400), St. John’s (Priscilla Frederick, high jump) and Iona (Leonard Korir).
The Division III Championships, to be held this weekend in Columbus, Ohio, will have qualifiers from such downstate New York schools as NYU and SUNY Farmingdale , and from such New Jersey schools as Rowan, Rutgers-Newark, Montclair State and Ramapo.
Over the weekend a number of athletes qualified for both national meets on the final weekend at the Armory, at both the ECAC Div. III meet -- being held at the Armory for the first time – and at the Columbia Last Chance meet, which produced fireworks on Friday night with a thrilling women’s DMR and then on Saturday, where qualifiers came out of the women’s 3k and the men’s and women’s miles.
Division I
The Van Dalens took the national leads over the weekend in the Last Chance meet in the mile and 5,000. Lucy, however, will pass up the mile in favor of the 3k, in which she also holds the U.S. collegiate lead and where she will tangle with such luminaries as Sheila Reid of Villanova (8:56.92 at the Armory in January) and Jordan Hasay of Oregon. Because of the meet time schedule, a double in the mile and DMR is difficult. Reid and Hasay are running the DMR for their respective schools, pushing them into the 3,000, though Hasay is entered in the mile as well.
Hale won the 200 and 400 for Columbia at the Ivy League meet, and her 400 time of 53.02 puts her 9th on the list. The Lions went all the way to Ames, Iowa, over the weekend to try to qualify in the 4x4 as well, on Iowa State’s oversize track, but fell short, running 3:37. The last team in was Kansas at 3:35.65.
Korir is in the 3k and 5k for Iona. Frederick has cleared 5-11 ½ in the high jump this winter for St. John’s.
New Yorker Charlene Lipsey, now a sophomore at LSU, ran a PR 2:04.55 over the weekend to qualify in the 800, giving the Tigers a boost in their quest for one of the team trophies. Oregon is favored to repeat as women’s team champions. Florida is favored to repeat in the men’s.
Other NY/NJ natives who have qualified include Dominique Booker, a sprinter having an outstanding freshman season at Central Florida; milers Caroline King (Boston College) and Caitlin Lane (Penn State); Southern Regional teammates Jillian Smith (800) and Danielle Tauro (mile), now running for Michigan; Providence 3k teammates Shelby Greany and Hannah Davidson; UCLA hurdler Lindsay Rowe; UConn sprinter Trisha-ann Hawthorne; Princeton’s Ashley Higginson (3k); UNC quartermiler Charles Cox; George Mason sophomore Chris Carrington (800), and Binghamton’s miler Erik van Ingen.
Jen Clayton, the recent Suffern grad who won the SEC long jump last month for LSU, nevertheless failed to qualify off her seasonal best of 20-4 ½. Others who missed narrowly were the two Columbia highjumpers, Monique Roberts (5-10 3/4) and Tara Richmond (5-10 ½); Malin Olsson of Manhattan (lj), Jesse Gaines of LIU (tj), miler Heidi Gregson of Iona and halfmiler Russell Dinkins of Princeton (1:48.29). “Our focus is on conference, though,” the Princeton men’s coach, Fred Samara, said. “After that, we’re exhausted.”
Division III
NYU has two contenders in the mile, Matt Turlip (4:06.65), 3rd on the seasonal list in the men’s, and Maeve Evans (4:55.02), 7th in the women’s. Quartermiler Dan McKinney (49.40) also made it, in the 400, and he and Turlip are two of the school’s four legs in the men’s DMR (9:54.88).
Farmingdale qualified DeShaun Thomas and Corinne Magee in the dashes and Qasim Ellis in the men’s horizontal jumps. Will Brown (Montclair) and Kevon Brown (Rutgers-Newark) made the men’s hurdles.
Ramapo qualified three vaulters (Michelle Favre, Lauren Riley and Craig Van Leeuwen) and sprinter/jumper Anita Rogers. Van Leeuwen stands 2nd on the yearly list at 17-0 ¾.
Krystal Ellis made it in the pentathlon (3,289) for Montclair.
Division II
Macky Lloyd qualified in the men’s mile for the College of St. Rose (Albany), at 4:10.95.
Columbia’s O’Neal receives coaching honor
Gavin O’Neal was named Division I assistant women’s Coach of the Year on Monday for the Northeast Region by the U.S. track coaches’ association. O’Neal’s Columbia women’s team finished a close 2nd in the Ivy League Championships last month at the Armory.
Princeton, which won both titles at that Heps meet, took three of the indoor coaching awards for the Mid-Atlantic Region – Samara (men) and Pete Farrell (women) in the head-coach category, Steve Dolan top men’s assistant coach.
The winners for the Northeast as head coaches were both from UConn, Greg Roy for the men and Bill Morgan for the women. The Huskies swept the IC4A/ECAC team titles over the weekend in Boston. Connecticut also won the Big East men’s title this season.
The Regional Div. I Athletes of the Year included Erik van Ingen of Binghamton (mile), Robert Golabek of Buffalo (shot put), New York native Walter Henning of LSU (weight throw), Sheila Reid of Villanova (distance), Lucy Van Dalen of Stony Brook (distance) and Victoria Flowers of UConn (weight throw).
Mick Byrne, the former longtime coach at Iona, was named men’s assistant coach of the year for the Great Lakes Region for his success at the University of Wisconsin, his current employer.
Hall wins JUCO hurdles for Essex County
Shanekia Hall of Essex County College, in Newark, won the women’s 55-meter hurdles at the national junior college championships over the weekend in Lubbock, Texas. Hall ran 7.71.
Local athletes also scored in the meet for Bronx CC; Mohawk Valley CC, of Utica; SUNY Delhi, Rend Lake, Central Arizona and South Plains.
Kia Allen, a graduate of Murry Bergtraum HS, placed 5th (18-3 ¾) in the women’s long jump for Central Arizona; Terrance Livingston, who began his college career at the University of Tennessee, was 5th in the men’s 600 for Rend Lake; Zavior Brown finished 3rd in the 800 (1:53.00) for Delhi; Errol Jeffrey was 4th in the shot (52-10) and Ashley Armand 3rd in the 1,000 (3:01.68) and 800 (2:16.09) for the Bronx, and Chris Gattman was runnerup in the weight throw (56-6 ¾) for Mohawk Valley. John Thomas, a star in the sprints a year ago for Sheepshead Bay, placed 3rd in the 200 (21.34) and 6th in the 55 (6.42) for South Plains.
Other scorers for Essex included Kanika Beckles, 2nd in the 400 (55.37); Elhadji Mbow, 2nd in the men’s 600 (1:18.84); Dembele Moussa, 4th in the men’s hurdles (7.45), and Sandra Bonga, 5th in the triple jump (38-5). Essex also finished 5th in the women’s 4x4 (3:52.39) and 1st in the 4x8 (9:24.31).
Weekend
UConn swept the team titles in Boston in the Div. I combo of the IC4A men and the ECAC women over the weekend. In spite of the size and quality of the fields, however, only one new NCAA qualifier emerged – the Delaware State men’s 4x4, which ran 3:06.98 to make the cut. (George Mason flew to Iowa State instead and also made it, running 3:07.57.)
Manhattan’s Brian McGovern won the vault, at 16-10 ¾, and Tewado Latty, a Jamaican from White Plains, was surprise winner of the 400, in 47.34. VMI won an excellent 4x8 (7:24.70) from Fordham (7:26.00) and Albany (7:26.01).
In the ECAC III meet in New York, Buffalo State won the men’s team scoring, TCNJ the women’s. A number of competitors got their national Q’s from this meet, and national Div. III leads went to Eric Woodruff of Moravian in the dash (6.37), Nick Guarino of Fredonia in the mile (4:04.68), Erica Johnson of Buffalo in the women’s dash (7.07), Wendy Pavlus of St. Lawrence in the 5k (16:54.41), and Karin Fisher of MIT and Abby Schaffer of Moravian in the vault (13-6 ¼). /JP/