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2002 WAC Championship Team Scores.htm
2002 WAC Championship Results.htm
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Two new team champions were crowned, Saturday, at the 2002 Western Athletic Conference outdoor track and field championships at the Wendel D. Ley Track on the campus of Rice University, as SMU took the mens title and Fresno State won the womens championship.
The Mustangs pounded the competition totaling 205 points, 70 of those coming from their throwing corps. UTEP finished second with 170, while Boise State was third with 122, followed by Fresno State with 116, Rice with 94, Louisiana Tech with 61 and Tulsa with 36.
Rices 4x400 meter relay crew of Adam Davis, Erik Mazza, Daniel Pessing and Ben Wiggins won the race with a time of 3:10.73, the best in the conference this season. The Owls Reed Ballis, in his final conference meet as an Owl, won the high jump with a jump of 6-11 .
The Fresno State women dethroned host Rice, who had won the previous two outdoor championships, tallying 129 points to Rices 126. Nevada finished third with 119, while SMU placed fourth with 103 points. UTEP finished fifth with 83, followed by Tulsa with 80, Louisiana Tech with 65, Boise State with 63 and Hawaii with 49.
The Owls Allison Beckford, who received the meets most outstanding female performance award, won the 400 meters with an NCAA automatic qualifying time of 51.86, and came back an hour later to win the 400 meter hurdle title with a time of 57.71. The Jamaica native ran the anchor leg on the Owls 4x400 meter relay that took second with a time of 3:37.54.
Competition began earlier than originally scheduled due to the postponement of events from Friday because of thunderstorms that rolled through the Houston area. In one of the highlights of the day, SMUs Libor Charfreitag clearly won the mens hammer throw with a heave of 250-11, breaking the previous stadium record of 226-04 he set back in 1998, and setting a new WAC championship record. Charfreitag leads the nation in the hammer throw, and will look for a national title in two weeks. In the womens hammer, Kaisa Klintonen of UTEP took the title with a mark of 191-00. Klintonen has already automatically qualified for the NCAA championships with a throw of 197-02.
SMUs stellar shot put champion, Janus Robberts, won his fourth straight title on Saturday with a new stadium record 69-01 . Earlier this season he threw 69-02 to automatically qualify for the NCAAs. The womens shot put was won by SMUs Ruta Rakstyte with a mark of 52-09 .
SMUs Dave Wollman was voted WAC mens coach of they year, while Fresno States Bob Fraley earned the honor on the womens side. Freshman of the year honors went to Hannes Hopley (men) and Karin van Rooyen (women), both of SMU. The meets outstanding performance award went to Allison Beckford of Rice and Janus Robberts of SMU, and the high point award winners were Crystal Simmons of Fresno State and Dalibor Balgac of SMU.
The NCAA outdoor track and field championships will be held May 29-June 1 in Baton Rouge, La.
re: Amanda Booren, Rice University