Head coach Pat Henry added a 24th national championship to his decorated LSU coaching career Saturday as the Lady Tigers women’s track and field team won their second-consecutive indoor title at the 2003 NCAA Indoor National Championship in Fayetteville, Ark.
The national title marked the 10th indoor national championshp for the women’s team, all with Henry as head coach.
“A lot of teams are trying to get into national championships, and these girls just won one,” said head coach Pat Henry.
The men’s team finished in fourth place while Arkansas men’s team won its first national championship since the 2000 season.
LSU All-American Muna Lee continued her dominance, claiming victory in the 60-meter dash and defending her 2002 title in the 200-meter run.
She broke the 21-year-old NCAA record in the 200 during the preliminaries in 22.49 seconds and won the national title 90 minutes later in 22.61. Both times surpassed the old record set by Merlene Ottey in 1982.
“This was one of my best meets ever,” Lee said. “I feel like I did my part and that we all did our part.”
Although she breezed through the 200, Lee jumped off to a rough start in the 60, falling behind Southeastern Conference champion Elva Goulbourne of Auburn. But, Lee sprinted past the Jamaican-native in the final five meters, posting a time of 7.17 and clinching a second-straight indoor national championship for the Lady Tigers.
“We had a great [meet],” Henry said. “We’ve had some great sprinters at LSU, and I don’t think we’ve ever had an athlete have a weekend like the one [Lee] did. This was one of the best accomplishments ever at the NCAA championships, and it happened to be a great LSU athlete.”
Goulbourne added national titles in both the long jump and triple jump, beating out defending national champion and lone LSU senior Nicole Toney by one-fourth of an inch for the triple jump title.
Jones added a national title of her own in the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.00 seconds. Jones won the SEC title in the event two weeks ago. She also finished sixth and garnered All-America honors in the 60-meter dash Saturday.
On the men’s side, LSU won the national title in the 4×400-meter relay for the second time in the past three years.
The tandem of Pete Coley, Marlon Greensword, Bennie Brazell and Kelly Willie outpaced the rest of the field with a time of 3:04.79, the third-fastest time in school history and the second-fastest time in the world this year behind the U.S. Team.
“We came here to run,” said Willie. “We came in with the state of mind that all races up until this point didn’t matter. All I can say is that my teammates truly did a great job.”
The Tigers were overtaken by South Carolina in the final ten meters of the event at the SEC indoor championships but came back strong at the national meet. The Gamecocks finished in third place at nationals behind LSU and Texas Christian University.
Willie, a freshman, ran the second-fastest time in the world in the 400-meter during preliminaries with a time of 45.79. But in the finals, he ran a 46.17 to place sixth in the meet.
Coley finished second in the 400 in last year’s meet and did not qualify for nationals until last weekend. He entered the meet with the fifth-fastest time in the country, but with a time of 46.40 in the preliminaries, Coley did not qualify for the final heat.
On the women’s side, the Lady Tigers 4×400 team of Nadia Davy, Stephanie Durst, Monique Hall and Hazel-Ann Regis finished third in the meet posting the second-fastest time in school history — 3:32.16.
Davy also placed third in the 400 while posting her fastest time of the year and breaking the school record in 52.06 seconds.
The 800-meter defending champion, LSU’s Marian Burnett, fell to third place this year. She ran the fastest time in the field during the preliminaries but ran a second slower in the finals, falling behind UCLA’s Lena Nilsson and Tennessee’s Nicole Cook.
LSU men’s jumper John Moffitt entered the national meet ranked first in the nation in the long jump and was undefeated in the event throughout the season. But with a leap five inches shorter than his top score of the season, he finished fifth in the long jump at nationals.
Moffitt also entered the meet ranked 10th in the triple jump, and finished third in nationals.
The Tigers came in limping with sprinter Robert Parham and LeJuan Simon struggling through injuries that hampered them the past few weeks.
Parham entered the meet ranked sixth in the country in the 200 while Simon ranked fifth in the nation in the triple jump. Both competed in the meet, but neither could produce points because of their respective injuries.
“They’re just not where they want to be right now,” Henry said. “Because of their injuries, they aren’t in great shape. With those two guys healthy, we’d finish second in the meet.”