Baylor
NCAA Outdoor Championships
MEN'S TRACK TAKES THIRD AT NCAA OUTDOORS
6/2/2001 12:00:00 AM | Track & Field
June 2, 2001
EUGENE, Ore. - Baylor senior Brandon Couts edged Auburn's Avard Moncur by one hundredth of a second in the men's 4x400-meter relay to give the Bears' 12th-ranked men's team its seventh mile-relay outdoor national title and a third-place team finish here Saturday in the final day of the 2001 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships hosted by the University of Oregon at Hayward Field.
Baylor's team 36.50 points is the second-highest total in school history, just shy of the 37 tallied by the Bears' third-place team finish in 1985. BU also finished third in 1990 with 34 points. Those three third-place finishes remain the second-highest NCAA finish of any team in Baylor history. The Bears had been predicted to finish 17th by one publication, 19th by another, entering the meet.
Meanwhile, the Baylor women finished 21st with 13 points, thanks to a fourth-place finish in the 4x400-meter relay by freshman Tiffany Wise, junior Chava Demart, senior Keisa Brown and junior Barbara Petrahn.
Tennessee with 50 points won its first men's team title since 1991, Texas Christian, which finished second at the 2001 Indoor Championships, was again second with 49 points. The team title was decided in the men's 200 meters as TCU's Kim Collins false started, the Horned Frogs did not have a team in the 4x400, while Tennessee coasted to an eighth-place time of 3:07.95.
The Bears, who were second through the third day of competition, were a distant eighth heading into the 4x400 final, leaping Stanford (36 points), Alabama (31), Arkansas (30), Texas-El Paso (30) and Oregon (27) while holding off Louisiana State (32).
"This may be the comeback of millennium," Baylor head coach Clyde Hart said. "The kids just did a great job this weekend. We've finished third twice before, but I think this is the sweetest. We came further with this group of men.
Hart said coming into the weekend, he knew everything would have to go the Bears' way for a top-five finish and that a third-place finish never crossed his mind.
"I expected us to be in the top 10 - top five if we hit on all cylinders and we did in most areas," he said. "But no one could have predicted that we would finish 1-2 in the intermediate hurdles Friday (Kamani and Michael Smith), and then the relay. Our kids ran that on tradition. I told them before the race, 'Run this for pride first, for the 4x400 title second and if you do that we'll finish third."
The quartet of Zsolt Szeglet, Bayano Kamani, Floyd Thompson and Couts entered the meet's final event knowing that a first-place finish would vault the Bears into third place and that anything less than first could place the team anywhere from fourth to eighth. The result was a photo-finish time of 3:03.89, just ahead of Auburn's 3:03.90, favorite Louisiana State finishing third at 3:04.37. Because of that, if Moncur had edged Couts the Bears would have finished fourth.
"It was simple: We knew going into the race that we had to win it," Couts said. "I just tried to hold on to the lead on my leg. I'm not back to 100 percent, but I knew I just had to do what I could do."
Szeglet turned in a first-leg split of 46.1 seconds, staying with LSU lead man Robert Parham and pulling ahead of Auburn's No. 1 Sanjay Ayre. Kamani followed with a 45.9-second split, but was passed in the final 20 meters by Arizona State's Marcus Brunson. However, Thompson took control of the race with his 46-flat third leg. Thompson pulled around Brunson at 100 meters, and by the time he handed the baton to Couts the Bears had a 10-meter lead.
That is when things got interesting. Arizona State began to fade as the Sun Devils' anchor Tony Berrian was caught by Moncur, the 400-meter champion, and LSU's Alleyne Francique, the 400-meter runner-up, in the first 150 meters. Moncur and Francique then began to close in on Couts, who finished seventh in the 400. As the quarter-milers came out of Hayward Field's famed Bowerman Curve, Francique began to drop back as Moncur pulled to a step behind Couts.
"I knew somebody was coming up on me," Couts said. "Everybody was going to be trying to come get me. I just wanted to hold them off, whoever it was."
Hart said he was scared by the technique Couts used, but that as it turned out his senior anchor ran the smarter race.
"He let them catch up with him in the first 200," Hart said. "He wanted to race them, I don't know that I would have done that, especially with the way Moncur ran the open 400. But he held him off. I'll take a hundredth of a second any day."
As if the Baylor men needed any more inspiration than they already had, the women's relay turned in a fourth-place time of 3:34.36 just prior to the men's heroics. Anchor Barbara Petrahn took the baton in sixth place, but moved to fourth in the first 200 meters. Clemson (3:29.97), Texas (3:30.36) and South Carolina (3:32.76) finished 1-2-3. UCLA was well behind Baylor at 3:36.09.
"That was a tough race," Petrahn said. "But no matter what happened, I was running that race for Keisa. This was her last race, and it was important to me for us to finish well. I dedicated this race to her."
Petrahn said that for both the men and women, the key to the day was the Baylor training staff of David Chandler and Melissa Gonzales. Temperatures were in the mid-50s with overcast skies and an occasional drizzle, conditions Petrahn said were far from ideal.
"David helped us so much - for the men and for the women," Petrahn said. "I really think he was as much of this as anyone. On a day like this, the work our trainers do is so important."
Barbara Petrahn earned all-America honors for the second consecutive year in the 400 with a fifth-place time of 53.59 seconds. Two weeks ago at the Big 12 Championships, Petrahn ran the second-fastest time in school history at 51.85 seconds to win the conference title. The junior from Gyor, Hungary, said the weather conditions made it difficult for anyone to run a fast time, backed up by the fact that winner Allison Beckford of Rice ran 52.33.
Also affected by the weather was Kerry O'Bric, who finished 15th in the heptathlon with 5,117 points. That total was well off her then school-record tally of 5,464 that placed sixth at the NCAA meet last year.
The seventh-place finish by Couts in the men's 400 at 46.27 seconds put a dent in Baylor's chances of a third-place finish, which is what Hart said they were shooting for entering the day. Couts was near the lead for the first 200 meters. However, coming off the third turn, he slipped back in the field and was eventually edged by sixth-place Tom Gerding of Minnesota in lane two (46.27).
But Hart chose to stick with his senior on the fourth leg of the relay, who became the first athlete to anchor Baylor to consecutive 4x400-meter relay outdoor titles. It marked Baylor's sixth title in the event since 1990, all coming in back-to-back fashion (1990-91 and 1995-96). Couts, who missed the indoor championships due to a hamstring injury, talked about the emotions of running his final race as a Bear.
"This means a lot to me," said Couts, who leaves Baylor as the fourth-most all-America decorated athlete in the history of the program. "We had such a strong team this year. There were a lot of times in the outdoor season when the other guys carried me on their backs, but we all stayed together. Everyone did a really good job of keeping me positive."
Kamani earned his fourth-career outdoor national title (two individual, two relay) as the second leg of the relay. No other Bear has ever won more than two outdoor titles, on the list of two-time champions are Couts, Szeglet, Thompson, Michael Ford, Daniel Fredericks, Michael Johnson, Raoul Howard and Corey Williams.
"It's just been a great season - one to remember," Hart said. "We had so many injuries, there was a time when we didn't know if we'd have Brandon or Bayano or Michael Smith. I can't say enough about our support staff, our trainer David Chandler and our student trainers for getting these kids ready."
