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June 08, 1998 - Image 11

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
Michigan Daily Summer Weekly, 1998-06-08

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

TRACK
,NCAAs offer individual efforts

Monday, June 8, 1998 - The Michigan Daily - 11

By Rick Freeman
Daily Sports Editor
BUFFALO, N.Y. -There's no ' in team, but there should
be one in track, at least for Michigan.
Michigan didn't really send a team to Buffalo, just a good-
sized pack of athletes. There was no chance that Michigan
could walk (or run) away with either the men's or the women's
team title. In fact, the Wolverines finished 15th.
This wasn't like Big Tens, where everyone cheers their team-
nates in every race, with one eye on the team scores, Michigan
distance runner Elizabeth Kampfe said. At NCAAs, the focus
shifts to individual efforts.
And what an individual effort Kampfe's was. Running in the
last race on the first night of competition, in crisp, cold air that
seemed more like October than June, only Michigan distance
coach Mike McGuire and her parents watched her ninth-place
performance in the 10,000-meter run in her first NCAA race

- a race she said was "pretty boring to watch"
McGuire didn't feel quite the same.
"It was a good race," McGuire said. "She made an aggressive
move between 6,000 and 7,000 meters; she kept the pack going."
McGuire noted that the only people who stayed for
Kampfe's race were "hard-core distance junkies."
But if watching scattered individual performances isn't as
exciting for the fans, what about for the athletes?
Sure, their own races and the races of their teammates are
exciting, but when your team's not on the scoreboard, compet-
ing must be a little less fun. Right?
"It's a different kind of fun," Kampfe said. "You watch how
your performance influences the team"
Tania Longe agreed. Longe said she gets more "psyched up"
when her team is around.
But with the only attention reserved for individual races, the
excitement only comes in spurts.

NCAAS
Continued from Page 12
Om, but won All-America honors by
virtue of being one of the top eight
U.S. citizens in her race, the 10,000.
When Sullivan fell, he picked him-
self up almost before the crowd was
finished gasping, and was just 50
meters behind the pack, he estimated.
It must have seemed like miles.
"I was just stunned more than any-
thing," Sullivan said. He made it to the
inish in 3:57.37, over 15 seconds
ehind Seneca Lassiter, the runner
from Arkansas who Sullivan nosed out
at the finish of ,this year's indoor
1,500.
He never considered giving up.
"I've never dropped out of a race
before, and I wasn't about to start
here, Sullivan said.
Sullivan's tumble came when the
runner in front of him fell.
"He just ran up on the guy in front
of him," Sullivan said.
And ran over Sullivan's dreams of
ending his Michigan career on a high
note.
Michigan's best finish was second,
by Mortimer in the 3,000 steeplechase
and McGregor in the 5,000 run. In the
steeplechase, Mortimer led near the
end but was passed by defending
champion Matt Kerr of Arkansas.
McGregor never led her race, as
Wrizona's Amy Skeiresz darted out to
an early lead that grew as the race
wore on. McGregor ran in third for
most of the race and held off a surging
pack, moving into second and chasing
Skeiresz to the finish.
"I never really gave up," McGregor

said "At no point are you like 'I can
never catch them."'
Michigan's only field event partici-
pant, Nicole Forrester, earned fourth
in the high jump by clearing 6-foot-1/2
inch, equaling her jump in last year's
championships. Tania Longe secured
seventh place in the heptathlon with
5,364 points, using a strong surge in
the final event, the 800.
"I felt the pressure," Longe said.
And she responded. Longe frowned
her way through the first six events, -
"I'm not happy with it at all," she said.
But when she moved up a spot, to
seventh, after the final event, she was
all smiles.
Longe said she usually saves her
best performance in the heptathlon for
Big Tens -as she did this year, too -
but the effort usually leaves her too
drained to place nationally.
"I'm usually dead meat from Bi
Tens," she said.
Michigan's two sprinters at nation-
als, Brian Theisen and Maria Brown,
failed to qualify in the I110 hurdles an
the 100 run, respectively.
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GUINNESS
Continued from Page 12
concentration.
6:41: Athletes place hands behind
starting line, stick butts in air. Crowd
goes silent.
6:42: Starter calls "stand up" (Why
not?) athletes jog down track, jump up
and down some more.
6:44: Athletes go through routine
again. Crowd again goes silent.
6:45: Starter fires pistol, athletes tear
like heck for the finish line, everyone
else jumps a foot, nearby photographers
swallow camems. etc.
6:45:11.37: Race ends.
And this happens in each of the
approximately twelve bajillion heats for
each of the 25 races. And then there are
field events, in which athletes throw
something incredibly heavy as far as

they possibly can at least 73 times. Or
they knock sticks off poles by jumping
into them.
Occasionally they miss completely
and go right over the stick, but this is rare.
No wonder this is being televised on
CBS.
But as I sat in the press box trying to
figure out how to make Guinness come
out of the soda fountain, I noticed some-
thing.
A runner, (I had no idea who she was)
put every ounce of her being into the 100
meters she had to run. Her sole reason to
exist at that moment was running. And

Elizabeth
Kampfe's ninth-
place finish in the
10,000 meters
was good enough
for All-American
honors.
RsirKFREEMAN/Daily
winning.
Or, sometimes, they lost, like
Stanford's TH IS GIRL in the 1,500. She
collapsed at the finish; all she had left to
give was hanging in gooey threads from
her lips. The rest she left behind her on
the track.
I'll guess that Rick Reilly never saw
that at an NBA game.
And that's why, when a race finally
gets underway, it's as riveting as anything
you could want in a sport in which
you've only heard of about 13 of the
roughly 4,337 competitors.
Now all I need is that Guiness ...

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