Track takes third in first outdoor meet

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by Frederick Wen

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Texas A&M University and the University of Houston, with 158 and 117 points respectively, finished ahead of the Owls, who finished with 80 points.

Junior Jeff Pope and freshmen Jason Lunn and Quinton Milner won their respective events.

Rice had to compete against five other teams, which were nearly at full strength since they did not send many, if any of their, athletes to Indianapolis.

But the Rice squad was missing the Olympic skills of junior Kareem Streete-Thompson and consistent stars sophomore Bryan Bronson, junior Ivory Angello, junior transfer Cliff Alexander, sophomore Chris Jones and freshman Brian Klein.

"At the beginning of the outdoor season, it's more of a laid-back meet because most of us are just making the adjustment to outdoors," Pope said.

Pope won the high jump event with a leap of 2.1 meters, equivalent to 6-10.75.

Lunn won the 800 meters with a time of 1:49:53, and Milner won the 400-meter hurdles in 52.21.

"Everyone was still really competitive and focused, but it was a nice meet to go out and not have to worry about winning as much as just having a good time," Pope said.

Some of the Owls had a harder time than others adjusting to the outdoor environment.

"It was a pretty good race, but it was really windy and cold," said sophomore Bryce Cramer, who finished third in the mile in 4:15.07. He also competed on the 4x400-meter relay team which came in second in 3:16.26 behind the University of Texas at San Antonio.

"By the time the relays started, it was so cold the spectators left," he said.

"We had some people who ran really well, and others who had problems, like me, who are more used to running indoors."

Other scorers for Rice were junior Ryan Haylock in third place in the javelin with a throw of 204-0, junior Ed Howard in fourth in the same event with a 195-0 toss and freshman Kodili Odimgbe who finished fourth in the shot put.

Derras Wilmington finished fifth in the 110-meter hurdles and second in the 400-meter hurdles, with times of 14.82 and 53.19 respectively.

Fortunately, all of the meets until the SWC Championships April 23-24 at the Rice track stadium are mainly for qualifying individuals for the National Collegiate Athletic Association Championships. The NCAA Championships take place from June 2-4 in Boise, Idaho.

"Everyone works hard to push each other to qualify for Nationals, but at conference, we'll all pull together to try to win the title," Pope said.

"It's much better to qualify early, but all of these meets are used to warm up for the conference tournament," Cramer said.

Assistant Coach Ray Davidson was in charge of the team while Head Coach Steve Straub was in Indianapolis with the qualifiers.

"We ran well, but it's so much different outdoors than indoors," said Davidson.

"Overall we did well, and we expect to have a good outdoor team, especially when some of the players who competed at Nationals come back."

The runners who competed at the Indoor Championship are eligible to run in this weekend's difficult Texas Southern University Relays. However, it is still questionable whether those athletes will be given this week off to adjust to the outdoor season.

"We may or may not field them this week, because this tournament is not nearly as important as the ones closer to Conference," said Cramer.

The most notable absence from the outdoor team this season will be Streete-Thompson, who will be red-shirted this season to save his last season of eligibility for next year.

But another potential pothole could be Bronson's hamstring injury, which prevented him from competing at Nationals. It will prevent him from running this weekend and he could possibly miss even more time.

"Losing Kareem will be a big loss for our outdoor season, but since it looks like we'll be picked to win next year, he'll be able to help us even more next season," Pope said.

"Plus, Bryan's injury will hurt us a lot if he's out for a long period of time. So with those two out and a lot of freshmen competing, it seems like more of a rebuilding year."

On the other hand, not everyone believes this season is a non-ontending one.

"Bryan [Bronson] should be back pretty soon, and even without Kareem, we'll still have a really strong team," said Cramer.

"We're still in contention, though we're probably more of the underdogs now."

Most of the SWC will not compete in the Relays, which emphasize the relay events but still include all the other events.

However, the level of competition will be up dramatically from last weekend.

Top outdoor teams such as Blinn Junior College and the Santa Monica Track Club, which includes professionals such as Carl Lewis and Dennis Mitchell, have run in this race before.

"In the past, we've had people qualify for Nationals at the TSU Relays, and sometimes guys like Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell might compete, so it'll make for an interesting weekend," said Pope.

This item appeared in the Sports section of the March 18, 1994 issue.

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