By Jack Pfeifer
It was no surprise to see Jenn Suhr on the podium at Sunday’s national championships in Des Moines, Iowa, winning another pole vault title. The surprise was to see a fellow upstate New Yorker there with her.
That was Mary Saxer, who grew up in Lancaster, not far from Buffalo, set the national high school record and then toiled in near-obscurity for four years at Notre Dame. Last year she blossomed a bit -- winning the Big East indoor championship at the Armory and placing a surprise third at the NCAA outdoor meet – but her personal best remained the 14-2 she cleared as an 18-year-old high school girl five years ago. Until Sunday.
This outdoor season, her first out of college, Saxer competed on the “B” circuit – fourth at the Kansas Relays, fourth at Drake, second at SeaRay, first place at the Gregory Invitational in Naperville, Ill. Competing on Sunday at the USATF nationals, at Drake University – as an Unattached athlete, without a sponsor or club – she matched her college PR, 14-1.25, then cleared a lifetime-best 14-5.25 on her third attempt, and then another one, 14-9 on her second, before going out at 15-1. That got her third place, behind Suhr and the veteran Becky Holliday.
Suhr needed three attempts at her opening height, 14-9, but then got it going, clearing 14-11, 15-3, 15-7 and finally 16-0.5, a height only she and the world recordholder, Yelena Isinbayeva, have cleared, and just below her own national record of 16-1.75. With Isi sitting out the 2010 season, Suhr is now world leader for this year. She then failed three attempts at becoming only the second woman to clear 5 meters, or 16-4.75.
There was one other remarkable coming-out party for an Easterner in Sunday’s concluding day of the national championships, and that came in the women’s steeplechase. Lisa Aguilera won the race, with Bridget Franek, the NCAA champion from Penn State, fading to fifth on the final lap. Not far back in eighth was a little-known recent graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jacqui Wentz.
Wentz, who is from Santa Rosa, Calif., had only achieved the qualifying standard for the meet May 28 when she won the NCAA Division III nationals in 10:16. That itself was a breakthrough, 6 seconds faster than her winning time at ECAC two weeks earlier -- which was 28 seconds faster than her seasonal best of 10:50 in April. And she was only getting warmed up. She ran a PR 10:13 at an all-comers meet in Massachusetts on June 4, then 10:04.76 at the obscure Rose Festival meet in Portland, Ore., on June 11. Wentz ran 10:05 in qualifying at USATF, then 10:12 off a slow pace, on a hot, windy day, in the final.
(MIT does not make many sports headlines, but the school does field teams in baseball, basketball, football, crew, fencing, field hockey, lacrosse, rifle, sailing, soccer, softball, squash, swimming and diving, tennis, volleyball and water polo, in addition to track and cross country.)
By Sunday, only Seniors competition remained at Drake. The Juniors meet concluded on Saturday evening.
In the women’s 400 hurdles championship, Philadelphian Nicole Leach held off recent Penn State graduate Fawn Dorr to finish 2-3, behind the winner, Ti’erra Brown of Miami. Takecia Jameson, also of Miami, finished fifth, Jernail Hayes of Seton Hall seventh.
Don Cabral, the Princeton sophomore, wrapped up a remarkable championship season, finishing seventh in the steeplechase and running 9:37.35, just off his PR, in the difficult conditions. Cabral also placed in both the steeple and the 5,000 meters at the recent NCAA championships.
Stuczynski, who went to Roberts Wesleyan College and lives in Churchville, N.Y. – between Rochester and Buffalo, for those of us who may be Upstate-challenged – was not the only person from that part of New York state to win a national championship on Sunday afternoon.
Lopez Lomong, who went to high school in Tully – in Onondaga County, between Syracuse and Ithaca – won the 1,500, prevailing in a fierce battle down the stretch with Leonel Manzano. (Lomong was of course born in Sudan, Manzano in Mexico. Both became naturalized citizens, and both made the 2008 U.S. Olympic team in the event.) In fifth was Matthew Centrowitz, the Oregon sophomore who grew up in Maryland.
In the men’s javelin, Ivy League athletes went 1-3. The event was won by Sean Furey, a Dartmouth graduate, at 262-0. In third was Craig Kinsley of Brown, who threw a PR 256-3.
In the men’s 20k walk, Tim Seaman of the NYAC finished second, in 1:33:10.21.