Princeton University
NCAA Championships
Players Mentioned
Ratcliffe is National Runner-Up as Women's Track & Fields Ends Season at NCAAs
June 12, 2015 | Women's Track and Field
Results l Results (.pdf) l Ratcliffe Interview l Ratcliffe Photo Gallery l Bird Photo Gallery l Barowski Interview l Barowksi Photo Gallery l Curham Interview l Curham Photo Gallery l Friday TigerBlog On NCAA track and field
EUGENE, Ore. (6/11/15) - Julia Ratcliffe is your 2015 NCAA hammer throw national runner-up!
Ratcliffe entered the meet as the defending champion and had the third-best mark of the season. Throwing second in flight 2, Ratcliffe looked to beat the top mark of flight 1 of 63.44 set by Julia Reedy (Oklahoma). On her first attempt she threw to 63.04 to put her into second place.
Shortly thereafter, Brooke Pleger (Bowling Green), the nation's leader entering today's meet, took the lead with a throw of 66.64 and moved Ratcliffe into fourth place. DeAnna Price (Southern Illinois) and Reedy were 2-3.
Ratcliffe's second throw was better, 66.33 to put her into second place behind Pleger.
Pleger fouled on her next throw and Ratcliffe released a throw of 67.30 to take oer the lead on her final throw of the preliminary round.
On the very next throw however, Price put away a 67.33 and took the lead over Ratcliffe by just one inch.
The top nine moved on to the final round and had three more chances to improve on their marks, as they threw in reverse order.
Pleger and Ratcliffe both fouled on their fourth throws and Price did not improve.
Ratcliffe threw 66.67 on her fifth attempt just before Price nearly missed the 70m tape and came away with an improvement of 68.33.
One more throw remained. Ratcliffe needed to throw further than 68.33 to take the lead. Her final throw would be short, at 65.93 making Price the national champion.
Price entered the ring the final time and threw the hammer past the 70m tape and set an NCAA championship record with a throw of 71.49.
“This spring, overall it has been good. I haven't hit my PR, but I was building there. I was improving every meet until Regionals, but obviously not a PR I'm not that happy about it.”
“Honestly, as I said before these girls are great friends of mine. They've worked so hard so I can't put them down for their excellent performances.
When asked if it made it easier losing instead by an inch but by an NCAA record, Ratcliffe responded: “Absolutely! I was glad she threw that otherwise I would have been beating myself up a little bit more. I'm a little disappointed in my throwing, but hey I came in ranked third and came out second, so I can't complain.”
Sophomore Lizzie Bird was next on the track in the second of two semifinals of the steeplechase. Bird was stepped on from behind and went down on lap one. She used a lot of energy to get back into the race, and at 1,000 meters was in sixth place. Bird started to drop back in the final 2,000 meter and finished 12th in her heat at 10:51.92.
Next on the track was junior Cecilia Barowski taking on the semifinals of the 800 meters. She was in the final heat of the 800 and was amongst the fastest qualifiers. Barowski struggled with tightness in her legs and finished seventh in her heat and 19th overall at 2:08.94.
“It was not as I planned, or not as I hoped,” Barowski said. “In the first 100 meters after the gun went off, my legs felt tight and difficult to move. Other than that the race conditions were perfect and ideal and I hit the splits I wanted to hit, I just wasn't with the pack.
We watched the first race go. The times to beat would have been sub-2:04, so that's totally doable. The second heat went out in 67 so we knew no times would be coming out of this heat. So all we had to do was for our heat to beat 2:04, which was definitely doable. Had I been with the pack it would have been possible to make it to Saturday, but it wasn't in the cards for today.”
Curham took the lead from the start in the women's 10k and held the pace through the first 3600 meters. Her name was repeated over and over again on the PA system at Hayward Field and on ESPN as she held that lead for the 11 laps. She started to slip back into the front pack at and 6000 meters was in 12th place. That would be where she would end up 4000 meters later posting a time of 34:09.08.
“It was windy out there, I wanted to keep the pace honest but the wind was pretty rough out there," Curham said post race. "When I started to get passed, I got a little bit sucked in and had to make up room and it got tired me out a little bit.”
“I felt good. Maybe it was the wind. I did exactly what I wanted to do. I went out around 80s and kept it as honest as I could. When I got passed and people slowed down again, I went back to the front, so I just tried to keep it as honest as I possibly could and that's what I went in to the race wanting to do and I did that and I'm happy with that."
Princeton concludes its 2014-15 track & field season. The team will head to Cuba next week on an international trip.