On the road again ... to USA Juniors

In what has been a nice, late spring/early summer tradition, we are off to Oregon on late Wednesday for the USATF Junior Championships at historic Hayward Field.

This year, we have two men qualified and set to run in the 10,000 meters – Isaiah Miller and Nick Hughes. Isaiah and Nick qualified for the event at UMass earlier this spring. Isaiah ran 32:44.15 and Nick ran 32:45.14. The qualifying standard is 32:45.00, but we appealed Nick’s time to get in and the waiver was granted. 00:00.14 over the course of a 25-lap race is quicker than the blink of an eyelash, and we are grateful his appeal was granted.

Our guys race at 9:30 a.m. on Friday (Pacific time). I will travel with my laptop and will try to keep the blog updated from Eugene. We are staying at a Motel 6 on the outskirts of town, and I’m not sure if I will have Internet at that fine place of lodging. Hopefully, I will. If not, I am certain I can find some WiFi (hopefully accompanied by COFFEE) somewhere in the vicinity.

For those interested in program lore, the 10,000 is the event in which we have had the most qualifiers for this meet in school history. Below is a list of qualifiers and the years they qualified.

It is important to note that we have had several freshmen athletes whose times would have qualified them for this meet, but they did not qualify to compete based on age – you cannot turn 20 in the year of the championship. In two recent examples on our men’s team, Will Griffin and Kenny Walshak both easily qualified for this meet based on times. But because both men were born in December, they missed the age cutoff by a matter of weeks. The same was true many years ago with Kirk Dornton and more recently with David Raucci. I am certain there are other examples that I am forgetting ...

Anyway, here are two lists for you. One is a list of qualifiers in the men’s 10,000-meter run. The other is a list of all other USATF Junior qualifiers through the years.

Men’s 10,000-meter qualifiers
1998: Greg Salamone
2000: Jamal Padgett
2003: Justin Harris
2004: Mark Fernandez
2005: Mike Rolek
2008: Tim Keegan
2009: Matt Flint
2010: Mike Nicoletti
2010: Arquimedes DelaCruz
2011: Isaiah Miller
2011: Nick Hughes

All other qualifiers
2000: Susan Golden, 800 meters
2006: John Keenan, 3,000 steeplechase
2008: Nick Webster, 3,000 steeplechase
2008: Adam Vess, 5,000 meters
2009: Kathryn Sheehan, 5,000 meters
2009: Addie DiFrancesco, 5,000 meters
2010: Jackie Gamboli, 1,500 meters
2010: Arquimedes DelaCruz, 3,000 steeplechase
2010: Arquimedes DelaCruz, 5,000 meters