By Jack Pfeifer
Aisling Cuffe, the junior at Cornwall Central H.S., defended her national Junior championship on Saturday in the girls 5,000 meters and won the race by 25 seconds, but she may not be eligible to run in the World Juniors meet for the United States later this summer.
The reason is that her winning time of 16:52.25 is short of the strenuous meet qualifying standard of 16:30.00. Performances can also be used from the previous season. In 2009, Cuffe ran even faster – 16:43.58.
Saturday’s race was run in the late afternoon, with temperatures at Drake Stadium in Des Moines, Iowa, in the low 90s.
Several American girls have surpassed the 16:30 standard this year, but none of them competed in Saturday’s race.
The current World Juniors list for 2010 shows a number of young women under 16:30, but from only a handful of countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, China, Japan and South Korea, plus one young woman from Mexico and one from Azerbaijan.
The runnerup in Saturday’s race was Emily Jones, the Georgetown freshman, who ran 17:27.91. Jones actually has a faster PR than Cuffe – 16:31.82, run at this year’s Penn Relays.
Only eight high school girls in U.S. history have run under 16:30.
One curious possible solution to the dilemma involves Emily Sisson, the Nebraska high school student who won the 3,000 several days ago, beating Jordan Hasay of Oregon and Cuffe in a hard-fought race. Sisson is one of the few Americans who has the 5k standard; Cuffe has met the 3k standard.
In one of the biggest surprises of Saturday in the USATF Senior women’s division, Shameka Marshall, the former Rutgers star, had two jumps over 22 feet and wound up fourth in the long jump. Marshall, a 2005 Rutgers graduate who now competes for the Shore AC, jumped 22-1.5 wind-aided in Round 4, then 22-1 legal wind (+2.0), a lifetime best, in Round 6. They were her first 22-foot jumps ever.
Suffern’s Jen Clayton, competing in the Senior LJ, jumped 20-3.75 with a legal 1.0 wind, her longest jump of this outdoor season. She finished 14th.
The women’s championship 400 was virtually an all-Eastern affair. Debbie Dunn, a graduate of Norfolk State who attended high school in Maryland, won it with a lifetime-best 49.64. In a furious stretch battle, Francena McCorory, recent graduate of Hampton and this year’s NCAA champion, caught New Yorker Natasha Hastings for second place, 50.52-50-53. It was a lifetime best for McCorory. In fourth and fifth were Monica Hargrove, a Georgetown graduate, and Penn State’s Shana Cox, from Long Island. Sanya Richards-Ross, the Olympic champion, withdrew from the final after struggling in qualifying.
Hampton had another runnerup on the afternoon. In addition to McCorory, Kellie Wells, also a Hampton grad, finished a surprise second in the 100 hurdles, behind the favored Lolo Jones, 12.69-12.84, but ahead of such hurdlers as Ginnie Powell Crawford and Damu Cherry.
In the women’s 400H qualifying, Penn State’s Fawn Dorr surprised Nicole Leach to win her semi in 56.39. In the final strides, Leach was also passed by Jernail Hayes of Seton Hall, who wound up second in 56.53, a lifetime best. Hayes proudly wore the blue-and-white SHU singlet even though the school has announced the demise of its track program.
Nicole Dumpson of Le Mans TC drew Lane 1 for that semi, ran well but wound up sixth, running 57.25, a lifetime best. Her clubmate Bridgette Ingram finished 15th in the heptathlon, with a score of 5,222. Pennsylvanian Ryann Krais, after a subpar NCAA performance for UCLA, scored a lifetime-best 5,693 and finished seventh. The competition was won by another native Pennsylvanian, Hyleas Fountain, who scored a PR 6,735, the highest score in the world this year. In fourth, also with a PR, was the Vermonter Kasey Hill, with 5,804.
In the women’s 1,500 championship race, New Jersey’s Erin Donohue surged to the lead with a lap to go, then was passed by Anna Pierce in the final strides, finishing second, 4:13.65-4:13.87. Sisters Margaret (NYAC) and Emily (Georgetown) Infeld wound up eighth and tenth.
The NYAC registered two victories on Saturday. In the Senior women’s shot put, the veteran Jillian Camarena won with a big throw of 62-9.25, defeating Michelle Carter by more than 2 feet. The club’s Tyler Barron finished first in the Junior men’s 10,000-meter race walk, in a time of 42:58.62.
In other Juniors action, Penn State freshman Evonne Britton won the women’s 400 hurdles in 57.99 to make the team for the Worlds. David Verburg of George Mason was third in the men’s 400, running 46.38 and possibly making the relay pool, and Coppin State frosh Jibri Victorian finished third in the Juniors IH, in 51.30.
Marielle Hall (Haddonfield Memorial, NJ) just missed in the girls’ 1,500, finishing third in 4:28.32. The team qualifiers were Oregon’s Hasay (4:26.38), and Rachel Schneider of Georgetown (4:27.26). Schneider is from Dover, N.H. Hall has signed with the University of Texas.
The Junior men’s 1,500 was won by Peter Callahan, a freshman at Princeton from Evanston, Ill., who ran a lifetime-best 3:46.42 – under the World Junior standard of 3:48.00. The runnerup, Elias Gedyon, a high school junior from Los Angeles, also got the standard, running 3:47.65. Sean Halpin, the Albany freshman who attended Iona Prep, finished sixth, in 3:53.
In the Junior women’s 5,000, other finishers, behind Cuffe and Jones, included Brooklynne Ridder of Penn State, third; Jennifer Gossels, freshman at Williams College from Lincoln-Sudbury, fourth; Kim Spano of Syracuse, sixth; Katherine Gorman of James Madison, ninth, and Sarah Pagano, Syracuse frosh from IHA in New Jersey, 12th.
