Paul Merca is a great friend of the sport. His first Olympic Trials was in 1980. Paul’s blog is well-followed and well-recognized. Paul will be writing for RunBlogRun in Eugene for the NCAA Championships, one column a day.
NCAA Track & Field Championships, Division 1, Observations on Day 1, from Paul Merca, paulmerca.blogspot.com,
Hello from Eugene and the NCAA Division I Track & Field Championships, the first of a three-course meal being served to track and field fans making the sojourn to the Pacific Northwest in June at Hayward Field.
The NCAA Championships are the opening course, followed by the NIKE Outdoor Nationals/USATF U-20 Championships next week and the US Olympic Track and Field Team Trials, which start June 21st and run until the 30th.
To make it easier for collegiate track and field fans to follow the progress of their favorite school, the four days of competition are split up, with Wednesday and Friday solely belonging to the men and Thursday and Saturday the domain of the women. The only event that crosses over from a scheduling standpoint is the combined events, with the men’s decathlon on the first two days of the meet and the heptathlon taking the last two.
One of the biggest stories on the men’s side is Texas’ Leo Neugebauer, who is looking to repeat as decathlon champion after winning the title last year on his home track in a collegiate and meet record score of 8836 points.
At the end of day one, the Germans scored 4685 points, the best first-day score in collegiate history.
His first-day totals included a run of 10.64 in the 100 meters, a long jump of 25-9.5 (7.86m), a throw of 57-3.5 (17.46m) in the shot put, a clearance of 6-9.5 (2.07m) in the high jump, and a time of 48.03 in the 400 meters.
After finishing third in the 100 against a field of 23 other multi-event specialists, Neugebauer rattled off three straight wins in the long jump, shot put, and high jump before finishing sixth in the 400.
In four of the five events, he scored 908 points or better, with only the high jump producing his lowest score of the day at 868.
If he were to replicate his second-day score of 4245 points from last year, that would give him a score of 8930. To put things in perspective, only six men have ever scored 8900 points or more in a decathlon.
That said, consistency across…
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