ACU teams looking for LSC titles

ACU men trying to win 12th straight; women trying to reclaim title

SAN ANGELO -- Abilene Christian will try to add two more Lone Star Conference track and field championship trophies to its resume this weekend when the Wildcats compete in the conference championship meet at the ASU Multipurpose Sports Complex on the Angelo State campus.

The meet will get started Friday at 3 p.m. with various field event finals.  Preliminaries and selected running-event finals will start at 5 p.m. Friday.  Saturday's action gets started with field events at noon and running-event finals at 5 p.m.  Results will be posted on the Angelo State Web site at the conclusion of each day's events.

The ACU men will be seeking their 12th straight Lone Star Conference championship and 21st league title overall since the Wildcats joined the LSC in 1973.  The women, meanwhile, will try to re-claim the title they lost to Angelo State last year as the Rambelles became the first team other than ACU to win a league championship in the 21-year history of the women's meet.

The ACU women lost last year's meet by one point (222-221), thanks mainly to the conference's addition of the heptathlon and decathlon to the conference meet.  Angelo State scored 22 points in last year's heptathlon and then held on to beat ACU by the narrowest of margins for the conference crown.

Last week in San Angelo at the David Noble ASU Relays, the heptathlon and decathlon competitions that count toward the conference meet point totals were run off, and the Rambelles again scored 22 points in the heptathlon competition.  ACU did manage to scratch out one point in the heptathlon, leaving it 21 points behind the Rambelles going into the weekend.

On the men's side, ACU had no trouble rallying from an 18-0 point hole to Angelo State last year as the Wildcats routed the field, scoring 178 points to easily outdistance second-place Angelo State, which finished with 130 points.  Last week in the decathlon, Angelo State grabbed an early with 16 points, while the Wildcats scored one point to leave them 15 points behind the Rams.

The ACU women have provisionally qualified 11 athletes in nine events for the NCAA Division II outdoor championship meet, which will be May 26-28 at ACU's Elmer Gray Stadium.  The Wildcats also have one automatic qualifier (Adeh Mwamba in the 1500 meters), and have provisionally qualified their 4x100 relay and automatically qualified their 4x400 relay.

Mwamba put on a spectacular show at last year's conference championship meet as she became the first athlete in the history of the women's meet to win the 800 meters, 1500 meters, 3000 meters and 5000 meters at the conference meet.  Inexplicably, however, she was not named the top track performer at the meet, an award that went to Texas A&M-Kingsville's Lashawndra Ratcliff.

ACU's other two returning conference champions are Brooklyn Hunt (400 meters) and Val Gorter (pole vault).

On the men's side, ACU has provisionally qualified 10 athletes in nine events for the outdoor championship meet.  The Wildcats have two automatic qualifiers in Lucky Hadebe in the 1500 meters and defending national champion Yevgen Pashchenko in the triple jump.  The Wildcats have provisionally qualified both their 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams.

Pashchenko (long jump) and Cory Aguilar (pole vault) are the only two individuals returning who won conference titles in 2004, but the bulk of both relay teams that won both the 4x100 and 4x400 conference titles.