May 15, 2010
Pac-10 Track & Field Championships Quotes (Saturday, May 15, 2010)
Field Events
Trey Henderson (USC), Men's Hammer Throw Winner
On Winning
"I'm really happy. The most important thing is that I scored points for the team. It's a good moment for me and my coach. I've kind of taken a long journey to get here to where I am right now, being a hammer thrower. It feels good."
On the Chilly Morning Weather
"It was a little chilly earlier. It took all of us a few throws to get into our rhythm. It picked up though, once we had a few throws. It wasn't too bad."
On USC's Chances to Win the Team Title
"I think they're great. We're all collectively focused on winning it. It's really not about what we do individually. It doesn't matter how far I threw today. I got points, and I think for each of our athletes that's the goal - to score as much as we can, and everything will fall into place. We're confident and well prepared. I know the whole team's going to come out and work really hard, and we'll see what happens."
Ryan Vu (Washington), Men's Pole Vault Winner
"I'm still really speechless and am completely blown away. Practice has been going well, but this is beyond what I expected. After I knew I had won the competition and tried to clear the next height, I was full of nerves and adrenaline. Still speechless, though, on winning a Pac-10 title."
Connor Landry (California), Men's Pole Vault Fourth-Place Finisher
"Just a really fun day. It was awesome competition. It was just fun to be with the home-court advantage. There were a lot of fans rooting for Cal. I had two clutch third-attempt makes. The first one was at 5.0. My second bar, which was 16-9, and then the second one was at 5.28. Third attempts are probably my favorite jumps, actually. I just need to do it on my first attempt more often, I guess."
On whether he felt that he could have finished better than fourth
"Honestly, the door was left open a lot of time by people out there. I could have snuck in there and maybe won it, or at least podiumed, so that would have been cool."
On competing in the Pac-10 Championships following his transfer from Cal Poly
"Conference meets have always been my favorite meets, because there's a lot of pressure and it's a lot bigger deal. It's fun to be at the Pac-10 Conference compared to the Big West, for sure."
Cyrus Hostetler (Oregon), Men's Javelin Winner
"Managed to stay warm and responded adequately to USC's Cooper Thompson's throw, which was not expected. It was really nice to see him do well, though, and get a solid mark in the beginning."
On the pressure of his throw
"Definitely felt the need to get a strong throw and managed to break the stadium record, which is always what you want. You always want to be able to put your marks down in history books. Coming off an ACL tear and it being my senior year, I wanted a title and wanted to defend my title."
Ryan Whiting (Arizona State), Men's Shot Put Winner
"Won last year, and we were expected to sweep, so it's nice to do it all over again this year ."
On the collegiate record
"I'm definitely not saving anything. Just got to do it. I cannot think about how far I can throw; just need to focus on what I can do.
On his throw
"The first throw is always the hardest, even though I had won the competition in my first attempt. But I'm getting more consistent, and this is my sixth 70-feet meet. I'm getting ready for something new and to be able to compete outside of college. I lost the world record last night by 11 centimeters, so I finally am at their level, and they know it."
Ashton Eaton (Oregon), Men's Long Jump Winner
On his strong early jump
"I knew it was going to be good. I just didn't know how good."
More on starting out strong
"I put the 25 out there and was waiting. I thought I was done, but on his second to last jump, he had, uh, to get competitive. I thought I was done, but it was okay."
On what he said to USC's Brendan Ames, whom he edged by one centimeter
"Well, he PRed by a lot. I was like, `If I was you, I'd be upset. But congratulations on your PR and good job.'"
Brendan Ames (USC), Men's Long Jump Runner-Up
"I got beat by a centimeter. It's just part of why we come out here. It's why we have conference and big meets. We come out here to compete. We come out here to push each other. Ashton's a great athlete. I knew I had to get something out there, and I knew he could overtake me. He just happened to beat me by one centimeter. I wanted to come in here and at least get top three, and I was able to do that, so I'm not too mad about it."
Hammed Suleman (California), Men's Long Jump Third-Place Finisher
"I started off good. My second jump was 24-7, and then USC [Brendan Ames] came in and beat that by a foot. That really pumped me up, and I came down the runway and landed kind of awkward - my hand was back, but I knew I was going to be in the top three. I was an inch away from my PR. I was excited - my first Pac-10s in my hometown, and I felt good. My family, my teammates were cheering me on the whole way."
Track Events
Steve Sodaro (Cal), Men's 3,000-Meter Steeplechase Winner
"Unbelievable. This year has been the most unbelievable year ever. Coaches believed in me. Teammates around me telling me what I should do, what I can do. It's just been hard for me to believe myself. I keep surprising myself every day.
On what was a bigger surprise: winning this race or running a four-minute mile
"This was my main goal of the year. I had been running really good workouts and was just going to see what happened. This was my goal the entire year. This is what I was aiming for. Going from here and just racing. I was just going to sit back and wait until I was strong enough to go."
On whether he was comfortable at that point
"I felt great until the last 100. I started looking back, to make sure no one was near me. After the last barrier, I just took it all in."
Mark Matusak (Cal), Men's 1500-Meter Trial Winner
"I didn't have a time yet for regionals. I hope I do today. It was great that A.J. [Acosta of Oregon] took it out and kept it going. There wasn't too much traffic."
On having a strong field
"It's a great field. The Pac-10 - the best distance conference in the nation. People try to argue that, but I don't think you can beat it."
James Brewer (Cal), Men's 1500-Meter Heat 2 of 2
This was his "first race since two days before I moved to California, so that was since end of August, last year. Very rusty, because of those nine months; six of those weren't running [due to foot injury]. I was very rusty. I wasn't really ready for it. I said in an interview a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't race until I was ready, but I lied."
On the state of his fitness and race readiness
"They're both pretty low, but I've cross-trained so hard through the winter, through this injury, and I've tried really hard to get back, and if I had any shot of making it to regionals and then to nationals, I had to run today. I'm in the final tomorrow. I'm going to run until that door closes completely. I won't give up."
Chris Derrick (Stanford), Men's 10,000-Meter Winner
On Stanford's top three runners biding their time
"We wanted to go as a team. If we had to jog, we had to jog, and go with six left to go."
On more race strategy
"We had control of the race, Elliott [Heath] and I, with about 500 to go. I went back to the front, ran a little faster with two laps to go, just because I knew there were a couple of Oregon guys on us. We wanted to drop as many non-Stanford guys as possible."
On wanting to win the last event even more because Stanford had not won an event today until the last one
"We definitely did. We were hoping to get a win in the steeple. We knew, too, that the first day is important, to set a tone for the rest of the meet. We definitely want to score a lot of points. We also want to score them in a big way, going one through three [in the 10,000]."
Elizabeth Patterson (Arizona), Women's High Jump Winner
"Felt relatively good today. Should have cleared my last height but couldn't quite execute today. It's my last Pac-10s though, so it felt good to come out with a win."
Jamesha Youngblood (Oregon), Women's Long Jump Winner
On whether that was her longest jump/a PR
"Ever. I'm pretty excited about that."
On her PR surprising her
"It really did. I didn't think my mark was that far. I was pretty happy with that one."
On winning so close to her hometown
"It feels really good, because my family is the loudest one out here. So, just to feel their presence and knowing that they're here cheering me on, is a great feeling."
On how many fans she has here today
"Pretty much the whole M section."
Julie Labonte (Arizona), Women's Shot Put Winner
"It's my first title, so I'm really happy. It's not a PR, but I'm really happy with what I did."
On Arizona's sweeping the top four spots in the women's shot put
"Our goal was to finish first, second, third and fourth, so we were really happy to do that."
On how she felt coming into today
"I felt pretty good. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I'm happy with my performance."
Marissa Tschida (Washington State), Women Javelin Winner
"I knew coming into the meet there was going to be a really good field. The Pac-10 has some really good throwers, so I knew it was going to be very competitive and I had to keep my head pretty level. My throws were okay; a little bit more up and down than I'd like. I was working toward a little bit more consistency than I got today, but I think overall, did the job, got done, not hurting. Hopefully the next two meets I can get my consistency down, keep it around 52, 53 and come off with more victories."
On contributing points to her team
"It feels great. We've been working hard this entire year and everyone's really been putting the team before themselves, just going out for points, trying to beat the next jersey behind you that's not ours. "
Sofia Oberg (Cal), Women's 800-Meter Trial/Second Overall and a Sunday Final Qualifier
"It felt good. I felt strong. My training has been going well, and I've been healthy. There are only eight possibilities now."
On how she feels going into tomorrow
"It's a championship, so you never know. It's probably going to be tactical, because we all have pretty even personal bests. It's going to be fun."
Claire Michel (Oregon), 3000 Meter Steeplechase Winner
"It was a hard race. We went out a little but slow, and I wasn't sure if it was going to be tactical or what. But after about two laps coach [Lananna] said that if it's not moving, just take the lead and go with it, because it's not advantageous for me for the race to go slow and turn into a kickers' race. That's really not my style, and the best thing that I can try and do is try to take the kick out of other people by pressing the middle of the race. So that's exactly the tactic and the approach that we took, and it seems like it worked."
Margaret Callahan (Arizona), Women's 3,000-Meter Steeplechase Runner-Up
On setting a school record with her finish (10:16.86) today
"That felt very, very good. I know ever since I started running the steeplechase at Arizona that school record was going to go down. That was a big PR to do it. I'm very excited, and I feel that's something I've been waiting for a while."
On how she felt going into the race
"Nervous but excited, because I felt like I had a chance do something I had never done. I never had a shot to be on the podium at Pac-10s before. I knew I had that chance. I tried to stay confident and sure of myself, and I did."
Nicole Blood (Oregon), Women 10,000-Meter Winner
"I just kind of tuned out the lapper and before I knew it, I had a mile to go. I was just waiting for coach to signal and then I was just getting anxious. And I never thought I'd get anxious in a 10K, but I was. When he finally said to go, I just got really excited and pretended to be a miler again."
On winning this event in her final year
"Awesome. The team performed all around just awesome today; just about as good as we could."
