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By Christina Teller

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

EUGENE, Ore. — Track meets don’t always go according to plan, and UCLA was reminded of that Wednesday.

In the first running event of the 2001 NCAA Women’s Track and Field Championships, the UCLA 4 x 100-meter relay team lined up hoping to advance to the finals. Instead, what they were left with was a botched handoff when freshman Sani Roseby tried to get the baton to freshman Sheena Johnson on the first exchange.

It was a combination of Roseby not running as aggressively as usual and Johnson leaving a bit too early.

The order of Roseby, Johnson, freshman Adia McKinnon and senior Shakedia Jones that Bruin Head Coach Jeanette Bolden ran Wednesday has only run two other times this year, at USC and at Pac-10s.

“It’s just a lack of experience and it’s probably more my fault than any of theirs because I just hadn’t put those four young ladies together on a regular basis,” Bolden said.

The Bruins had to shake off the disappointment of the 4 x 100m, but the residual shock seemed to carry into the 400m hurdles just 25 minutes later, in which Johnson was seeded first. Johnson placed sixth in her heat and will not continue to the finals. Senior Michelle Perry, however, gutted through her heat in that event, placing second with a time of 57.78 seconds.

Several other Bruins came through, beginning with junior thrower Chaniqua Ross, who finished third in the discus finals. She was third in the prelims and finished competition with her first throw of the day as her best at 180-feet-9 inches.

After her finish, Ross beamed, felt confident about her performance, and was happy to have done her part for the team.

And though Ross is focused on her events, it’s still a team competition. When asked how she thought the 4 x 100m relay would affect UCLA, she answered simply, “In a meet like this, things are going to happen, and that’s kind of the fun of the meet, but somebody’s going make it up somewhere.”

And the 800m runners did.

With three women entered in the 800m, there was a good chance that there would be at least one in the finals. But one wouldn’t be enough and freshman Lena Nilsson and Ysanne Williams responded by advancing to the finals in the 800m by placing 1-2 in their heat.

In the second heat of the 800m, sophomore Tiffany Burgess was running anywhere from fifth to seventh place throughout the race and ended up with a sixth-place time of 2:07.64. Though she didn’t get the personal record she had hoped for, she knows the race was good for experience.

The third heat went at a slower pace than the previous two, and midway through the race Nilsson was boxed in on the inside of the pack. In that situation a runner can either fight through the runners ahead of her or go around the leaders. Nilsson opted for the latter while fellow Bruin Williams broke away from the pack, putting a substantial lead between herself and the others.

“I’ve run this race long enough to run to know when to hold back and when to go,” Williams said. “It’s all about running your own race.”

On the final straightaway, with Williams kicking hard, Nilsson pulled up alongside her and the two looked to finish neck-and-neck. Nilsson edged Williams out 2:07.00 to 2:07.06.

Williams knew that making the finals was something she needed to do for her team. She used the earlier mishap in the 4 x 100m as extra motivation.

“We needed to make up for that and bring in two people in the 800,” Williams said, “and we did. I believe we can still win it.”

The short relay is just one event out of the 13 that UCLA is entered in. With five more events ahead of them today, it’s still anyone’s race.

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