By Jared Fields, Editor in Chief
MANKATO, Minn., – Head coach Don Hood’s morning Lucky Charms cereal didn’t quite give him the extra luck his team needed to overcome St. Augustine’s College at the NCAA Div. II Indoor Championships. The men finished 19 points behind in second place. Since 1985, no team other than St. Augustine’s of ACU has won the men’s indoor championship.
“You can’t fault anybody for what we did but at the same time you can fault everybody because we had opportunities in every single event to score a point or two higher,” Hood said. “And if every single person had scored an extra point, that’s 17 points.”
Bringing home the lone national championship for either the men’s or women’s team was Winrose Karunde in the 5000m. Karunde’s time of 17:02.93 beat the nearest competitor by just more than seven seconds. Teammate Loice Cheboi finished fifth in the event with a time of 17:16.10.
Rounding out the women’s scorers from Saturday were Azraa Rounds who placed fifth in the 400 with a time of 56.19 and the 4x400m relay team, which finished second. The women’s team finished in 10th place with 31 points, trailing third place by just seven points.
“The women have had a lot of things in the last month that just kinda ripped their hearts out,” Hood said. “I’m not discouraged at all. I’m very disappointed for the girls because you don’t want to be on the team that’s the lowest placed team in school history at the national meet.”
The women scored 22 points in the final two events, and Hood said he hopes the team takes that positive momentum into the outdoor season. With two women qualifiers not making the trip and another battling injuries, the team faced many challenges just making it to Minnesota.
Kelli Clements, who earned all-American honors at last year’s indoor championships, failed to make the finals Saturday, scratching twice.
“When the women step back and look at this season as a whole, there’s going to be a tremendous relief that it’s over because of the things that have happened,” Hood said about the conclusion of the indoor season. “I think it’s going to get better. I think it has to get better.”
The men, on the other hand, drew basketball comparisons for their performance Saturday. Like trading two-pointers for 3s, the men never made a dominating play.
“To me it’s like a basketball game. Sometimes you can have the greatest effort in the world and the ball just doesn’t fall through the hoop and you lose the game,” Hood said. “And that’s kinda what we had. We gave great effort but instead of three-pointers we were hitting layups.”
The men’s team had plenty of solid performances and personal bests, but none that were a defining moment of the meet.
“Decent is a good word for it,” Hood said. “There wasn’t anything spectacular, it was just, to me, it was almost just a workmanlike effort.”
A few efforts came close. Davy Manga scratched his final triple jump attempt by thismuch, which the crowd thought could have won. Instead, the defending outdoor champion finished second. Ramon Sparks jumped 49-5.00 for fifth place. Four pole vaulters qualified, but the best finisher was Stephen Toler at fifth. Aaron Cantrell finished eighth, clearing 15-11 on his first attempt.
“They’re a little frustrated, but when outdoor season comes around we’re going to have more than four in it,” Toler said. “It just wasn’t clicking for me today. I didn’t line things up on the top of my vault and it was kinda dirty up there. I had the heighth to get over it but I just knocked it off every time.”
In the final event of the meet, the 4x400m relay, ACU’s men trailed St. Augustine’s by 10 points. Needing a win and a St. Augustine’s disqualification to tie, ACU finished the relay eighth. Their time, 3:17.74, was three seconds slower than their qualifying time.
“We never lowered the BOOM,” Hood said. “We never had the big event that sorta set the meet in motion. We just kept hangin’ on and hangin’ on and we never got a good grip to come back and win the meet.”
With all the doom and gloom talk and no boom, the men walked away with more accomplishments than most schools. But with the team’s rich history, anything but first isn’t enough.
For starters, Serge Gasore put Curt Schilling’s 2004 World Series bloody sock to shame. Needing to score points to help his team’s chances going into the 4x400m relay, Serge’s spikes began to blister his right foot badly with almost two miles remaining. However, Gasore finished the race seventh with a personal-best time of 14:29.09. When the race was over, Gasore’s skin hung from the ball of his foot. His sock, bloodied all along the bottom, previewed the damage before he removed his sock.
Not quite as dramatic, freshman Desmond Jackson finished sixth in the 60m dash and second in the 200m while also anchoring the 4x400m relay.
“I guess eventually it’ll hit me over spring break that I got second in the 200,” Jackson said. “The 4×4’s the last thing on my mind so that’s kinda what I’m feeling right now.”
Andrew McDowell registered two personal bests here, and finished fifth in the event with a time of 8.02.
“Wanted to PR, knew I was going to PR cuz I felt good and I’d been practicing good,” McDowell said. “I’ve ran on a big stage before so this isn’t much different. I just think of it as another meet; think of it as practice. I always run well in practice so I just think of it as practice.”
Teammate Billy Walker, who qualified sixth with his own personal best time of 8.04, finished seventh with a time of 8.12.
Rounding out the men who scored points were Raymond Radway and Julius Nyango.
Nyango, the defending 800m outdoor champion, finished eighth in the mile run. Radway finished the 400m finals with a 48.57 in seventh place.
After the ups and downs of this weekend, Hood hopes his teams refocus for the outdoor season.
“Real track starts …” as Hood said as he claps his hands, “… next week. That’s good!”
Hood may want to win every meet his teams enter, but he doesn’t put too much stock in the indoor meet.
“To me that’s what indoors are. It’s that opportunity to see where you are at that point in the season,” Hood said. “I think we learned a lot about ourselves and I think we’re a lot more encouraged than what we were coming in. Our training is not set up for indoors.”
Last year the men’s team lost the team indoor title by 35 points and won outdoors by just as much. Though the triple crown is gone, Hood said his team’s chances at outdoors are just as good.
“I’m actually encouraged. I’m disappointed with the results, but looking at it as a whole from the team perspective – the mile relay especially – I feel like we’re very, very close to being a great team,” Hood said. “I can live with that, because I think outdoors we’re going to be a much better team.”
For a complete list of results from the 2008 NCAA Division II Indoor Championships, visit:
http://www.flashresults.com/2008_Meets/indoor/NCAADII/
