Highsmith leads the way for Huskies
By Christopher Hunt
all photos by www.wingedfootfotos.com
You could probably hear the scream through every corner of the building. Then Connecticut senior Tamara Highsmith came screeching down the side of the runway, arms flailing everywhere and looking for yet another person to hug.
“It just felt right,” she said. “I was in the air and I just knew. Then I looked back in the sand and I just started screaming.”
Highsmith, on her final attempt, popped 43 feet, 8 inches to in the triple jump at the Big East Championships. Highsmith was part of the onslaught in the field events that separate the Huskies from the field and gave them their first Big East championship. Highsmith’s jump was the best of her career and qualified her automatically for the NCAA championships. UConn scored 103.50 points, finishing ahead of Georgetown, which scored 92.
Highsmith also scored 3,831 points to place third in the pentathlon, then she anchored the Huskies’ third-place 4x400 relay that finished in 3:44.27.
“We hang our hat on Tamara Highsmith,” UConn coach Bill Morgan said. “She’s the one.”
She wasn’t the only one though. Sophomore Carin Knight, a former New Rochelle standout, won her first conference championship, clearing 5-10 3/4 in the high jump. Knight beat Syracuse senior Jillian Drouin on attempts. Drouin finished second in the high jump in the same height and winning the penthatlon. Knight endured the added pressure of having the conference championships less than 30 minutes from her home in New Rochelle.
“I came in here the No. 1 seed but that meant nothing to me,” she said. “I felt really good. The past couple of weeks I’ve been struggling with my approach and my technique. But I’ve been working really hard in practice and today everything went perfect. … It feels really good to help my team and especially to do it at home. It was really important for me to do well here. I didn’t want people to see me and say, ‘What is she doing at school?’”
Tynisha McMillian also finished third in the shot put, tossing 50-6 3/4. Between the triple jump, high jump and shot put Sunday, UConn scored 26 points where Georgetown was shutout.
“We’ve been knocking at the door,” Morgan said. “We just needed to break through. Coming in, we knew that everyone was in a position to score. Everyone had a chance and they came through. They really stepped it up.”
Another former hometown star, Trisha Hawthorne, scored big in the sprints for UConn. Hawthorne, an all-American at Hamilton High School in Elmsford, finished second in the 60 meters in 7.55 then placed second in the 200 in 23.98. Both times Pittsburgh senior Shantea Calhoun nipped the freshman at the finish line.
“I was nervous the entire time,” the freshman said. “This is my first Big East meet and I really didn’t know what to expect. I just kept trying to calm down. In the 60, I didn’t get a good start and I tried to catch up but that didn’t happen. Then in the 200, I tried to just run hard and focus in front of me because I was in Lane 6 but the girl from Pitt just got me in the end.”
Hawthorne battled with a nagging hamstring injury her senior year of high school that followed her until the start of the indoor season. Now that she remedied that, she’s been fighting with pain in her right ankle. None of that hampered her during the competition though.
“It feels really good because we won and I really feel like I had a hand in it,” Hawthorne said.
Villanova senior Akilah Vargas, a former Boys & Girls star, won the 800 meters in 2:09.63. Vargas got knocked to the 
rear of the pack early and fought her way back in. She was still boxed with 250 left but decided to make her own opening. Vargas, sitting in fourth, slowed a bit, then popped to the outside and took over the race. She stormed down the back straightway with a surge that couldn’t be matched.
“I’m pretty timid on the line and I haven’t really been knocked around like that,” she said. “With 200 to go, I was just thinking that I got to get out of this bad position. I don’t know what I was doing. I was just all over the place. I just knew I had to get to the front.”
Vargas’ name is easily recognized at the New Balance Armory. Her sister Jamilah, was also an outstanding runner at Midwood High in Brooklyn.
“This is honestly the biggest meet I’ve run here since high school,” Vargas said. “I walked in and people were like, ‘Hi Akilah.’ I was thinking, oh my gosh I can’t run bad here.”
One of the most impressive runs of the after was Marie Louise Asselin of West Virginia winning the 3,000 in 9:20.56, well below the provisional qualifier for the nationals. Asselin sprinted ahead straight from the start and never gave a chance for the field to challenge her. She said she struggled in over the last 1,000 meters but still managed a decisive win.
“I felt good,” she said. “That’s about what I wanted to do. It just feels good to come out and win a Big East title.”
"I saw them fighting up there and I wanted to get up there and fight with them," Rodgers said.
But instead, she flew by both of them in the final 10 meters for the victory in 4:50.19.
"We're not as blessed as some other teams," she said after the race. "We really just come out here and try our hardest and do what we can."
Her words spoke volumes as UConn's depth simply outlasted the rest of the conference. By the meet’s end both Connecticut teams, both champions, held a mini photo shoot on the Armory’s infield.
“We knew exactly what we needed to do coming in,” Highsmith said. “Everything had to be exact. There was no margin for error. We came in and we did it.”
Reach Christopher Hunt at chunt@armorytrack.com.