Galo Pesantes
Staff Writer
The 2006 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference held its championship meets April 24-25 at Redlands. Many La Verne track and field athletes competed on day one of the preliminaries and day two of the final events.
On the men’s team, junior Darnell Gilbert proved to be the only winner in the men’s individual events as he took home the 100 meter dash crown.
Gilbert also placed in eighth place in the 200 meter dash in his second individual event of the finals.
Playing the role as an anchorman once again, Gilbert along with senior Dustin Elliott and junior Melvin Ward led the Leopards’ relay team to second place with a finishing time of 43.07 in the 4×100 event.
“I felt bad that we didn’t take first,” said Ward. “I was kind hoping we would until they announced that Cal Lutheran had beaten us in the relay.”
Other La Verne male athletes participating in the championships included junior Isaac Grenzenbach, who finished the hammer throw in fourth place over two other closest competitors from Claremont.
In the discus throw, senior Dennis Parr maintained his consistent performances in meets throughout the season by placing in the top 10, this time finishing sixth.
Sophomore jumpers Wade Worthy and Jonathan Fitzhugh finished one after another in the long jump as they both placed in the top 10 in the final tally.
Junior Efrain Partida improved on his sixth place finish in preliminaries to finish in fourth place in the 1,500 meter run.
Other prominent finishes for the men included Dwayne Griffiths seventh place finish in the 400 meter dash and Gabriel Garcia took sixth place in the shot put event.
As a team, the men finished overall in seventh place, losing out to Cal Tech for sixth place in the final standings.
Yet, the women’s team was far more fortunate in the standings and performances in the finals.
Junior Erica Pembleton secured the win in women’s hammer throw as she beat her next closest competitor by more than two meters.
Freshmen Danielle Lampkin and Constance Mayaki also placed in the competition finishing third and eighth respectively.
In the pole vault competition, junior Chelsea Sherier won her second consecutive SCIAC championship title by winning the event with a distance of 3.48 meters.
La Verne had four athletes participating in the discus throw with Lampkin taking the highest place in second, Antoinette Borders finished in fifth while Mayaki and junior Veronica Andrews rounded out the top 10.
Four jumpers also competed in the women’s long jump as freshmen Briana Gonzales and Valerie Woods finished in fourth and fifth places while juniors Deonne McLean and Claudia Ramirez also finished the event in the top 10 of the standings.
In the 400-meter dash, McLean went from third in the preliminaries to runner-up in the finals and losing to the winner from Redlands by fractions of seconds.
McLean also aided the 4×100 team in which Gonzales, Woods and junior Krystle Luckey helped La Verne finish in third place in the standings.
“Last year, we held the national 4×100 record time but this year we had two new faces to the relay team, so we could not be disappointed in our performance in the event,” said McLean.
In the last few events of the finals, three other female athletes performed to championship status.
Senior Alexis Candelaria finished third in the 5,000 meter-run behind competitors from Redlands and Claremont.
In addition, field athletes Mayaki and Andrews both took home first place in shot put and in the javelin throw. The victories were seemingly not enough as La Verne fell to runner-up position losing to Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in the team standings.
“I think we were satisfied with our second place finish,” Andrews said. “We did the best with what we had and not having girls participate in four events really hurt our chances to win it all.”
As the season winds down for both men and women’s teams, they will travel on May 6 for the Claremont Classic in which both teams will look to improve on their recent performances.
Following the Classic, the La Verne track and field teams will travel one more time to Los Angeles and to the campus of Occidental for the Occidental Invitational to wrap up their seasons.
La Verne athletes holding national record times will also compete in the upcoming NCAA championships to be held in Illinois May 27.
Galo Pesantes can be reached at gpesantes@ulv.edu.