Junior hurdler Kori Carter won the 100-meter and 400-meter hurdles Pac-12 titles with school-record performances as Stanford finished fifth on the women’s side and 10th on the men’s at the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships at Loker Stadium in Los Angeles.
Carter’s 54.21 in the 400-meter hurdlers was the fastest time in the world this year, breaking the meet and stadium records in the event. Her 12.76 in the 100-meter hurdles—taking place 90 minutes before the 400-meter hurdle—beat out UCLA’s Brea Buchanan by one hundredth of a second and was the seventh-fastest time in the world this year.
Carter’s 100-meter hurdles time met the IAAF World Championships ‘A’ standard, a mark she had already met in the 400-meter hurdles.
The junior’s two individual victories earned a total of 20 team points. The Cardinal finished with 86.5 points, over 50 points behind Pac-12 champion Oregon.
Stanford’s other individual title on the weekend came from sophomore javelin thrower Brianna Bain. Bain set a stadium record in the javelin with a throw of 176 feet 8 inches to win the conference title for the second consecutive season.
Junior Jessica Tonn had a strong weekend in the distance events for the Cardinal. On Saturday, Tonn finished second in the 10,000-meter run with a time of 34:41.68, 24 seconds behind first-place finisher Jennifer Bergman of Arizona. It was Tonn’s personal record by a whopping 30 seconds.
On Sunday, Tonn fought through fatigue to earn another top-five finish, this time in the 5,000-meter run. Tonn just edged out her teammate, sophomore Aisling Cuffe, for fifth place to earn four more team points, bringing her total to 12 points on the weekend.
The Stanford men struggled to mirror the women’s fast pace.
Senior thrower Geoffrey Tabor finished fourth in the shot put Saturday with a throw of 55-11.25, his fourth-consecutive top-five performance in the event at the conference championships.
On Sunday, Tabor came back with a season-best 189-10 in the discus, a distance farther than his Pac-10 winning throw in 2011. However, Tabor would finish third behind a stadium-record 214-07 from Julian Wruck of UCLA.
Tabor finished with 11 team points over the two events, accounting for over a quarter of the men’s team total.
Freshman Steven Solomon, a 2012 Olympic finalist for Australia in the 400-meter, faced a tough fight in the event on Sunday. USC’s U.S. Olympian Bryshon Nellum took first with a stadium-record time of 44.76. Solomon finished in third, breaking the Stanford freshman record with a time of 46.12.
Stanford’s total of 43 points put the team in last place of the 10-team field, just two points behind ninth-place Washington State but over 100 points shy of Oregon, who distanced itself from runner-up USC by over 40 points.
The Ducks won both the men’s and women’s team titles, marking their fifth consecutive sweep of the conference championships.
The 2013 Pac-12 Championships represented a steep drop-off for both Cardinal squads from last season. In 2012, the Stanford women finished second and the men finished in a tie for fifth.
Next up for the Cardinal is the NCAA Regional Championships from May 23-25 in Austin, Texas.
Contact Sam Fisher at safisher ‘at’ stanford.edu.