By Jeff Eisenberg
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
The waning stages of the women’s outdoor track and field
national championships gradually developed into a duel for bragging
rights in the sport. The battle between South Carolina and UCLA for
first place was intense, but even more compelling perhaps was the
race for conference supremacy.
For the second year in a row, the Pac-10 and South Eastern
Conferences established themselves as head and shoulders above the
rest.
The numbers are staggering.
Six of the nation’s top seven teams at the NCAA
Championships last week in Baton Rouge, La. were from either the
Pac-10 or the SEC. The two conferences combined for 13 of the 21
individual championships and dominated the leaderboard in most of
the events.
At last year’s outdoor nationals in Eugene, Ore., seven of
the top eight teams were representatives of either conference as
well.
“Those schools are each extremely rich in
tradition,” Pat Henry, head coach of the SEC’s LSU
Tigers, said before the championships. “They recruit the type
of athletes that can compete on a national level.”
While the programs in either conference recruit the top talent
in the nation each season, their philosophies are very
different.
The South Eastern Conference’s elite programs ““ LSU,
South Carolina and Florida ““ tend to focus their recruiting
efforts on the short sprints and the hurdles. The Gamecocks tallied
all of their points on the track last week in winning the their
first ever national championship, while fourth place LSU had just
one scorer in the field events.
The Pac-10 teams concentrate much more on having a balanced
program.
USC, UCLA and the rest of the conference features talented
athletes in all disciplines of track and field. In their national
championship season a year ago, the Trojans won individual titles
in the 100m, 800m, and the javelin throw, also placing highly in
the throws and the jumps.
This year, the Bruins won five individual championships,
including an NCAA record four in the field events en route to a
second-place finish.
“Every team has their strengths,” UCLA head coach
Jeannette Bolden said. “Since I have been here at UCLA, I
have always tried to have a balanced program, and that balance gets
better year after year.”
Regardless of the differences in strategies, both have been very
effective. With freshmen like Monique Henderson at UCLA and
Leshinda Demus at South Carolina, the two conferences should
continue to dominate for the next several years.