May 27, 2004
ORLANDO - Eight UCF track and field athletes are looking to make history when they compete in the 2004 NCAA East Regional Championships this weekend in Gainesville.
Competition, which includes teams from as far north as New England, begins on Friday at noon and runs through Saturday at Percy Beard Track on the University of Florida Campus. Top five finishers from each of the events, along with four at large qualifiers from the NCAA's descending order list, advance to the NCAA National Championship to be held at the University of Texas from June 10-12.
Golden Knight sophomores Tiffany Roebuck and Rian Thomas participate in the meet's opening event - the women's hammer throw. After missing all of the 2003 season due to a medical redshirt, Roebuck has made a remarkable comeback in qualifying for her first NCAA Regional by winning the Atlantic Sun Conference title. She holds the school record in the hammer throw with a mark of 185-feet, six inches - which she achieved at the UCF Throws Invitational on April 9 and also surpassed the regional qualifying mark at the James Madison Invitational a month later.
While she took second to Roebuck at the A-Sun Championship, Thomas earned a trip to Gainesville with her winning throw of 178-3 at the same JMU Invite. The mark is second best all-time at UCF.
Also competing on Friday is freshman Katie Fowke in the pole vault. She advanced by way of her conference championship win and has also set a school record in the event with a mark of 12-feet.
Meanwhile, freshman Karen Kozub makes her NCAA debut in the preliminaries of the 800-meter event. She is currently second all-time at UCF with a time of 2:12.02 that helped her win gold at the A-Sun Championship.
On Saturday, freshman LesSundra Ford and junior Ann Louise Larsen compete in the high jump. Ford has been impressive in her rookie season, shattering the previous school record in the event with a leap of 5-11.25 at the Florida Relays on March 27, a mark that stands as the seventh best effort in the region and ranks in the top 25 nationally. She was third at the Georgia Tech Invitational two weeks ago at 5-10.
Larsen qualified for the regional for the second consecutive year after posting a mark of 5-8 in several meets, including the Georgia Tech Invite. She also won the event title at both the USF Invitational and the JMU Invitational, while she placed second at the conference championship.
A silver medalist in both horizontal jumps at the 2004 A-Sun Championship, senior LaTrica Firby makes her first appearance at the regional competition in the triple jump. Firby put up a season-best mark of 40-5.5 at JMU - just shy of the school record (41-2.5) she set in 2002.
Finally, sophomore and two-time qualifier Andrea Morrow takes the track at 8 p.m. on Saturday for the 3,000m steeplechase. With a school record time of 10:50.27, she won the Florida Relays title in Gainesville earlier this season and was also the champion at the Georgia Invitational.