EUGENE, Ore. – It looked like Nicole Blood was going to win another Pacific-10 Conference championship in the 5,000 meters for the hometown Oregon Ducks, with the big crowd at Hayward Field yelling its approval. The Oregon women were also headed to their first team championship in 17 years.

      PORTLAND, Ore. – Matthew and Lauren Centrowitz, brother and sister but attending colleges 600 miles apart, have been seeing a lot of each other lately.  They got together last November at the NCAA cross country championships, where Lauren was running for Stanford and Matthew for Oregon; in March, at the NCAA indoor championships in College Station, Texas; and a week and a half ago at the Cardinal Invitational at Stanford, where both Matthew and Lauren ran stunning lifetime bests in the 1,500 meters.

To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of The 168th Street Armory, ArmoryTrack.com will count down the 100 greatest moments in Armory history. Starting December 2nd, we will announce a new one, everyday except a few holidays. So tune in each day to see the next great moment.

For an ex-New Yorker, Monday is the last roundup

Dick Weis is hanging them up on Monday in Terre Haute, Ind. There couldn’t be a better day for it, because the school where he has coached for 26 years, Oklahoma State, is a contender to win the NCAA Division I men’s cross country championships that afternoon.

Iona, Syracuse, Plattsburgh, Cortland, NYU, Geneseo, St. Lawrence, and Stonybrook are all heading to nationals in Indiana. Nicole Blood and Lindsey Sherf, former New Yorker's, will also be racing for Oregon.

Nicholas Koiyet and Jackline Toek advanced to the NCAA Division II cross country national championships over the weekend for New York Tech. Both qualified as individual competitors in the East Regionals held at Franklin Park in Boston.

It’s been a long journey for Lindsey Scherf, the young woman who started running in Scarsdale when she was a 5^th-grader. Now, at 22 and a Harvard graduate, she’s a member of the top-ranked cross country team in the country.

NYU opened defense of its NCAA championship in men’s cross country over the weekend, winning its own invitational Saturday morning at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

Coach Nick McDonough’s Violets, surprise winners of the Div. III nationals a year ago, rested two of last year’s top returnees, Jesse Schneider (Delhi NY) and Calvin Lee (Old Tappan NJ), and relied on newcomers. “We’ll be looking to reload after our last few highly successful seasons,” McDonough said. “We have a lot of young guys, including some freshmen, that will help fill the void.”

pic by www.photorun.net

By Jack Pfeifer 

By Jack Pfeifer

EUGENE, Ore. – Muna Lee, always a solid sprinter on some of those great LSU teams but rarely a champion, won the biggest race of her life here on a hot Saturday evening, winning the Olympic Trials 100 in a lifetime-best 10.85. The next four runners also broke 11.00.

READ MORE HERE

PHOTO BY VICTAH SAILER/ PHOTORUN.NET

ArmoryTrack.com will on be on-site in Eugene, Ore. for the US Olympic Trials. As a lead-up to the event Jack Pfeiefer and Kim Spir put together this preview of New York area athletes and athletes with ties to The Armory. 

FULL OLYMPIC TRIALS PREVIEW HERE

Truman’s Rashaud Scott wins the NCAA discus for Kentucky Wildcats

By Jack Pfeifer

DES MOINES, Iowa – Rashaud Scott, a graduate of Truman of the Bronx, won the NCAA discus throw for the University of Kentucky on Friday here on the campus of Drake University.
 FULL ARTICLE HERE

LSU, FSU are top teams 

By Jack Pfeifer 

DES MOINES, Iowa – Shana Cox wrapped up a sterling four-year career at Penn State by winning the NCAA championship Saturday in the 400 meters, and bringing the Nittany Lions from behind on the anchor lap to victory in the 4x400 relay as well.
COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE

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.
FULL ARTICLE HERE

 Cox advances in 400

By Jack Pfeifer

DES MOINES, Iowa – Shana Cox won her first-round heat Wednesday in the 400 meters as the NCAA Championships got under way at Drake Stadium, the first time the meet has been held at this venerable building, home of the Drake Relays, in 38 years.

Cox, a senior at Penn State, won Heat III in 52.55, qualifying for Friday’s semifinals, and her teammate, Dominque Blake, fellow New Yorker, advanced on time, running 53.44 for 3^rd place in Heat V.

 FULL ARTICLE HERE

By Jack Pfeifer

EUGENE, Ore. – With a flourish under a shockingly clear blue sky, this Northwest college town put on the country’s best one-day track meet Sunday, the annual Prefontaine Classic, as a final dress rehearsal for the upcoming Olympic Trials. They will start here at the University of Oregon’s spiffed-up Hayward Field in just 18 days. FULL ARTICLE HERE

photo courtesy Kim Spir / OR.Milesplit.us

Chanelle Price (Easton, Pa.) will go after the national high school record in the girls’ 1,000-meter run this Friday night, Feb. 8, at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational at The Armory in New York.

Price broke the girls’ national mark in the 500 meters on the Armory track two weeks ago, running 1:10.30. The record in the 1,000 is 2:43.40, set 3 years ago by Sarah Bowman, of Warrenton, Va. FULL ARTICLE HERE

Complete lineups for the High School and Juniors events are available here.

Men's Accepted - Women's Accepted - Men's Seeded - Women's Seeded 

Coaches fax scratches to 212.923.1645

Open, Junior, and HS events to follow. 

MEET HOMEPAGE 

    The best college milers in the business – Leo Manzano of Texas and Brie Felnagle of North Carolina – will be back to defend championships at the 2008 New Balance Collegiate Invitational, to be held at the Armory Feb. 8-9.

    Manzano, a senior, ran 3:59.08 to win the mile a year ago, setting up his NCAA championship in the event for the Longhorns a month later. Outdoors last year he was 2nd in the NCAA 1,500 in 3:37.48 and 2nd at the national championships in 3:35.29. He was outdoor NCAA 1,500 champ as a freshman in 2005.

FULL STORY HERE 

    Egor Agafonov, Zlata Tarasova and Kate Sultanova – two weight throwers and a pole vaulter – will compete at the 2008 New Balance Collegiate Invitational indoor track meet at the Armory in New York Feb. 8-9. All are Russian athletes competing for the Kansas University team. The Jayhawks, coached by Stanley Redwine, are competing in the meet for the first time. - FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE

    Walter Dix of Florida State and Trindon Holliday of LSU will face off at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational at the Armory Feb. 8-9.
    They were 1-2 in the NCAA 100-meter final last spring in California. Dix also won the 200 and ran on the winning 4x100 relay team, leading the Seminoles to the NCAA team championship. He has lifetime bests of 9.93 in the 100 and 19.69 in the 200 and is a contender for this year’s U.S. Olympic team. 

FULL ARTICLE HERE

PHOTO COURTESY USATF.ORG 

 Eight high school relay races and four individual Juniors events are set for this year’s New Balance Collegiate Invitational Feb. 8-9.

 Interested parties should contact the Event Coordinator, Dan Doherty (dohertyd@optonline.net) - MORE INFO HERE 

Iona, NYU, McDougal All Shine in XC

It has been quite a week of cross country for New Yorkers.

For the first time ever, a New York City-area team has won one of the national collegiate championships. Nick McDonough’s NYU men’s team won the Division III title last Saturday in Northfield, Minn.  FULL STORY HERE

Div III Cross Country Roundup

    NYU won the East Regional on Saturday at Van Cortlandt Park and moves on to the NCAA Division III national cross country championship meet Saturday in Minnesota. The Violets were men’s NCAA runnersup a year ago. The team that defeated them a year ago, Calvin College of Michigan, is the team to beat again. Calvin has been ranked #1 in the national polls all season, Nick McDonough’s NYU squad #2.  FULL STORY HERE

photo courtesy www.nyu.edu/athletics

NCAA Div I Cross Country Roundup

The Iona men and Princeton women won their regionals Saturday and advanced to the NCAA Division I cross country championships. Those will be held next Monday in Terre Haute, Ind., an event that will be televised live for the first time, on ESPN.  FULL STORY HERE

 
left: Photo by Kim Spir from the Bill Dellinger Invitational. 

The Iona men and Princeton women continued their success this cross country season, winning their conference championships over the weekend as they head to the Division I Regionals Nov. 10.

Coach Mick Byrne’s Iona Gaels won their 17th consecutive Metro Atlantic men’s championship, scoring 17 points, 2 over the minimum. They were led by Mohamed Khadraoui, a Moroccan emigre who starred at Paterson (N.J.) High.

Marist was 2nd with 61, led by Girma Segni, an Ethiopian refugee who was the PSAL champion in high school for Brooklyn International.

In the most recent coaches’ poll, Iona was ranked 4th in the U.S. The Iona women also won their 3rd straight conference title, led by Californian McKayla Plank, the individual champion.

READ MORE

Al Oerter, a New Yorker who went on to be one of the greatest competitors in Olympic history, died in Florida on Monday morning at age 71.

 Oerter was born in blue-collar Astoria, Queens, but his family later moved to the Long Island suburbs. As a student at Sewanhaka H.S. he set the national high school record in the discus, throwing 184-4 in a meet at Randalls Island.

He competed at the Armory in the early 1950s.

One of the Armory’s favorite sons – the miler Alan Webb – is headed for the final of the men’s 1,500 at this summer’s World Championships in Osaka, Japan, thanks to a breathless stretch run in his semifinal Monday evening to qualify by a fraction of a second.