All season junior transfer Shane Martin has been searching for the perfect race.
He consistently placed first or second at multiple meets and even earned NCAA provisional marks.
Even after a personal best of 14.10 seconds, Martin believed he still could improve his starts and shave off more time.
This past weekend at the California Collegiate Athletic Association Championships, Martin found, if not the perfect race, something close to it.
Martin broke a school record, set a stadium record and qualifying mark for nationals with a 13.83 time, winning the 110-meter hurdles.
“It was just out of this world,” coach Chris Bradford said. “He also ran a leg in our 4 x 4, he also long jumped and scored points for us, he really had an amazing weekend.”
The conference meet, unlike regular season meets, had preliminary heats to narrow the field down to eight for the final race.
To prepare for the two races, Bradford has scheduled athletes to compete in multiple events at meets to simulate the conference meet schedule.
In the preliminary race, Martin placed second with a personal best 13.99. Cal State Los Angeles senior Ingvar Moseley, who ran in a separate heat from Martin, set the fastest time of the preliminaries with a time of 13.94.
“That really just motivated me to really make me want to get the W and take the gold home,” Martin said.
Martin’s goal all season has been to run a sub-14 second time and he still believes he can take more off this weekend’s performance.
“There’s always room for improvement,” Martin said.
“I don’t want to limit myself to 13.8, I definitely think that time will decrease especially as we get to nationals which get even more competition.”
Martin led the men’s team to a third overall finish that included nine top three finishes and four NCAA provisional marks.
Senior Austin Collier placed second in the long jump with a 7.28-meter leap in his sixth and final attempt.
Senior Kyle Victoria placed second in the pole vault event by completing a 4.95m vault.
Freshman Kaelin Moore also placed second in the 400m hurdles with a time of 52.62.
NCAA provisional marks represent times that could qualify athletes for the NCAA National Championships.
Other top performers on the men’s side included junior Matthew Velasco whose throw of 50.13m in the javelin event placed him third.
Two of the men’s relay teams placed in the top three.
The 4x100m and 4x400m relay teams each placed third overall.
Another thrower placed in the top three for the men’s team with junior Paul Bentz placing third in men’s discus with a throw of 47.98m.
Sophomore Matthew Chukwueke rounded out the men’s top marks by placing third in the triple jump with a leap of 14.61m
The women’s team placed seventh overall lead by three second place finishes and two NCAA provisional marks.
In what could be her final race for Cal Poly Pomona, senior Alisha Greenlaw placed second in the 100-meter hurdles with a time of 14.22 seconds, setting a personal best and her first NCAA provisional mark of the season.
“I felt more focused, my legs had been in pain previously and that felt better,” Greenlaw said.
“My family was there and that really helped to get me that time.”
The other NCAA provisional mark on the women’s side came in the 3,000-meter steeple chase with junior Araseli Servin placing second with a time of 10 minutes, 43.02 seconds.
According to Bradford, the time was Servin’s personal best and puts her just shy of hitting an automatic qualifying time.
Junior Hannah Stueve also placed second in the pole vault with a 3.61-meter vault.
Only Martin is guaranteed to race at nationals, but Bradford and his staff believe many athletes are within striking distance of improving their times enough to qualify.
Athletes in that category will have a last chance to qualify at the All on the Line meet this Saturday.
“I was really proud of how they did,” Bradford said.
“Almost across the board people had season bests in most events. We scored in a lot of areas we weren’t projected to score going in.”
The Broncos are looking to improve on the four athletes who qualified last year.
Show Comments (0)