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The Rice Thresher
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by Chris Larson thresher editorial staff
The men's track team finished sixth in a 14-team field at last weekend's University of Houston Indoor Invitational with 32 points, far behind champion Texas Christian University's total of 89. But the middle-of-the-pack finish wasn't at all discouraging for the Owls because they weren't there to win. Head coach Ray Davidson gave several of his distance runners a break last weekend. He also elected to run all of his strong middle-distance athletes in the 800-meter run so he could use their performances to decide how to set up the team's distance medley relay. Hopefully, the training will take them one step closer to winning the battles that really count - the Western Athletic Conference Championships Feb. 22-24 and the NCAA Championships March 9-10. "We were trying to accomplish things other than scoring a lot of points," Davidson said. "We put all our middle-distance runners in the 800, so we didn't get any points in the mile, and we didn't run some people to save them for this week." Of the athletes who competed, freshman Adam Davis again stole the spotlight. Davis easily won the 800-meter run by a margin of almost two seconds. His time of 1 minute, 50.88 seconds was nearly identical to his Jan. 26 time of 1:50.73 and is the third-best time in the nation. "Adam ran extremely well again," Davidson said. "He wasn't pushed and ran almost even splits on each of the four laps. It's pretty incredible to be able to do it that way, and he ran almost the same time he had against a lot better competition." Junior Keith Pierce finished third in the 3,000 meters in 8:28.49, five seconds faster than he had run the previous weekend. Davidson has Pierce pointed toward a breakout performance in the mile at Iowa State. "Keith's ready to run a good, fast mile," Davidson said. "He's in better shape and is better technically than he was at any point last year. His body position is so much more efficient this year. I'd be very surprised if he doesn't run fast. His workouts have been too good." Despite battling a cold, sophomore Tommy Oleksy came in second in the long jump with a jump of 25 feet, 4.5 inches. The jump is Oleksy's career-best indoors and qualifies him provisionally for the NCAA Championships. "Currently he's ranked 14th in the nation," Davidson said. "The jumps are loaded this year. There are three people a centimeter or less ahead of him, and if we can get five more inches out of him he'll be an automatic qualifier. He's certainly capable of jumping that much farther - he just needs to hit a good one." Oleksy also finished fifth in the high jump with a personal-best 6-9. "That was his first time high jumping in more than a month," Davidson said. "He didn't feel well all week, and he still PR-ed in 2 events." The ultra-young 1,600-meter relay team composed of Pessing, Davis, Mazza and sophomore Jeff Jorgensen is primarily a long-term project, but their mark of 3:19.12 was good enough for fourth place last weekend and was Rice's best time this season. "We're still trying to develop it," Davidson said. "They need to get used to facing top-notch competition and get their butts kicked a little bit so that they come home and know they need to get to work." The meet is the Owls' last one before the WAC Championships, which will be held Feb. 22-24 in Reno, Nev.
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