Baylor
NCAA Outdoor Championships
Men's 4x400-Meter Relay Edged Out of National Championship
6/1/2002 12:00:00 AM | Track & Field
June 1, 2002
BATON ROUGE, La. - An amazing 43.97-second split by anchor leg Darold Williamson wasn't quite enough as the Baylor 4x400-meter relay was just edged out of a second consecutive national title in the event in final day action from the 2002 NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Changing up the relay order from the preliminaries, sophomore Joel Martin started the Bears off with a solid 46.59 lead leg. Sophomore Robert Quiroga then took over the reigns keeping the Bears in fourth place with a season-best 46.09 split. The hand off to senior Michael Smith was smooth as he turned in a 45.29 third-leg time, keeping Baylor in the race at the number four position. Freshman sensation Darold Williamson then took the baton for the Bears' anchor leg. Williamson gained on the pack through the final 200 meters and looked as if he may edge out South Carolina's anchor, Jonathan Fortenberry, but fell just short at the finish line as South Carolina posted a 3:02.16 time to Baylor's season-best 3:02.21 mark.
"Our 4x400 relay was amazing considering we ran four completely different people then we had on last year's national championships team, " said head coach Clyde Hart. "We weren't just rebuilding one or two legs we had a whole team to rebuild this season. To get beat by only .05 seconds is pretty amazing and I'm really very proud of this group."
In the women's 4x400-meter relay the foursome of Tiffany Wise, Chava Demart, Danielle Myricks and Barbara Petrahn combined for their second-best time of the season, 3:32.74, to finish sixth overall. The Lady Bear's finish matched Baylor's placing each of the last two years in the national championships and earned the quartet All-American accolades.
With the additional All-American honor tacked onto her resume, Petrahn is now tied with former Baylor athletes Yulanda Nelson and Jennifer Jordan as the most decorated female athlete in Baylor school history, each owning nine titles apiece. Petrahn is now also tied with Jordan for the women's school record in relay All-American titles, with seven.
The only athlete competing individually for the Bears today, Williamson earned individual All-American honors for the first time in his career, finishing fifth in the open 400 meters with a 45.34 clocking. It was an even heat in the first 100 meters of the race before Tennessee's Gary Kikaya and Florida's Rickey Harris took the lead at the 200 mark with Williamson close behind in third. Williamson was unable to hold his pace in the final 100 meters and dropped to fifth as Kikaya cruised to a meet-winning 44.53 time.
In the team standings the Baylor men finished 18th overall with 16 points as LSU won the meet (64) and Tennessee (57) and SMU (42) followed in second and third, respectively. South Carolina took the women's crown with 82 total points, while UCLA (72) and Southern California (57) rounded out the top-three. The Baylor women finished in a four-way tie for 41st with five points.
