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Ramon Sosa advances in NCAA HH for Orange
By Jack Pfeifer
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Ramon Sosa, the Syracuse senior who went to Brentwood High School on Long Island, advanced to the semifinals of the high hurdles Thursday on the second day of the NCAA Division I championships on the campus of Drake University.
On a day when the torrential rains finally subsided – after another overnight storm featuring high winds and lightning – Sosa equaled his lifetime best of 13.79 and finished 4th in Heat II of the preliminary round. He advanced on time to the semis, to be held on Friday.
His time is just .07 from the Olympic ‘B’ standard. Sosa represents the Dominican Republic.
In shot put qualifying, Rashaud Scott (Truman, Bronx) made the final for Kentucky, going 60-6. Scott qualified Wednesday for the discus final. John Hickey (Tappan Zee), competing for Iowa, failed to advance, with a best of 57-10 ½.
Virgil Hodge (Washington Irving, NYC) narrowly missed making the 200 final. Hodge, who competes for TCU, advanced to the semifinals earlier in the day, running 23.26, and she ran 4th in Semi I several hours later. She missed the final qualifying spot by .01 to Natalie Knight of Florida, 23.29-23.30.
Hodge is not the only New Yorker running for the Horned Frogs. In the men’s 4x4 qualifying, with Brooklyn natives Che Chavez (Poly Prep) and Clemore Henry (Transit) running two of the legs, TCU ran 3:05.19 for 3rd place in Heat III. They missed making the final on time by one-tenth of a second.
Two New Yorkers ran in the women’s 800 semifinals but failed to make the final. Jessica Ortman (Kentucky) finished 7th in Heat I in 2:06.54, and Jesse Carlin (Pennsylvania) was 5th in Heat II in 2:05.88.
In the 4x4 qualifying, Seton Hall’s women’s team finished 3rd in Heat III in 3:34.18, missing the final. The Hall used a team of Alex McCoy, Toneisha Friday, Janeille Brathwaite and Jernail Hayes.
In the women’s 100 hurdles, UCLA freshman Lindsay Rowe (Cardozo, Queens) failed to advance, running 13.80 in Heat IV.
Other non-qualifiers included Gordon McKenzie (Queens) of Kentucky in the 200, Wendy Dorr (Williamsville South) of Penn State in the 400 hurdles and Trisha-Ann Hawthorne of Connecticut in the 200.
In the first finals of these four-day championships, the long jumps were won by Ngoni Makusha of Florida State and Brittney Reese of Mississippi, the decathlon by Ashton Eaton of Oregon and the 10,000s by Lisa Koll of Iowa State and Shadrack Songok of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
In the team competition, the men’s division continued to focus on LSU and Florida State. Walter Dix and Charles Clark advanced to the 200 final for the Seminoles, while Richard Thompson did the same for LSU. Dix, Thompson and another Tiger, football star Trindon Holliday, will face off in the 4x1 and the 100 finals Friday night.
The women’s team competition appeared to be a three-way battle among the defending champions, Arizona State; LSU, and Texas A&M. ASU’s strength is in the throwing events, while LSU and A&M will fight it out in the sprints and relays.