May 26, 2004
LAS VEGAS - UNLV's women's track & field team is sending five athletes to this weekend's NCAA West Regionals, hosted by Cal State Northridge in Northridge, Calif., on Friday-Saturday. This is the second year the NCAA has used regional competition in order to advance qualifiers to the national championships, held this year in Austin, Texas on June 9-12.
Last year UNLV came up short at the regionals, as the four Rebels just missed out on advancing to the nationals, with only the top five in each event moving onto the national meet. The Rebels expect to have a much more successful performance this weekend, with several expected to challenge for the regional titles in their events.
Highlighting the Rebel contingent is junior Christine Spence, who will compete in both the high jump and the 400m hurdles. Spence easily broke the Mountain West Conference high jump record at the 2004 Outdoor Championships earlier this month in Las Vegas, as she became the only woman from the conference to ever clear six feet (6 feet, 3/4 inches) on the way to the MWC title. She is one of just four competing in the regional that have jumped six feet or higher this season. Also winning a conference title at the MWC Championships was junior Halima Decree in the 100m dash. She will run in both the 100m and 200m dash at the regionals, and is expected to compete for top-five finishes in both, with her main competition coming from the UCLA and USC sprinters.
Junior Kiyota Reed comes into the regional as one of the top 100m hurdlers in the field, though she was forced to miss the event at the MWC championships due to a pulled hamstring. Also running the 100m hurdles will be classmate Miesha McClendon. Both competed in the 2003 NCAA West Regionals as well. The final Rebel is senior Tiffany Smith, who will participate in the triple jump. UNLV's 4x100m relay team of Spence, DeCree, McClendon, and Reed will also compete in the regionals.
"Three of our athletes, Christine, Kiyota, and Halima have great chances to advance if everything pans out, and I feel it should be a very successful trip for the entire team we're taking," said UNLV head coach Barbara Ferrell-Edmonson. "They have been turning in great performances in practice, and are defintely peaking at the right time of the season, they are all on their game right now. Kiyota will come in having run a 13.31 in practice this week, we don't expect more then two ahead of her at the meet. Hopefully, the 4x100 relay can get under 45 seconds, which should be good enough to advance to the NCAAs, and would also get Miesha to the national meet as well. Tiffany would need a career-performance to advance, but she has the potential, she's been hitting her stride at the right time, getting her speed up and should have a good performance this weekend."
