Before every meet, ASU women’s sprints coach Kenny McDaniel leaves his runners with an analogy to try and inspire them.
At the Last Chance Meet at Iowa State on Saturday, McDaniel looked to the big screen for help.
“I told them that they have to understand that a couple of weeks ago, they ran fairly well with two members of the team off,” McDaniel said. “It’s like when you see a good movie, you can’t wait for the sequel to come out. I told them that I wanted to see a good movie.”
McDaniel will be on the lookout for the completion of a trilogy.
The Sun Devil women’s 4x400 meter sprint team of redshirt senior Jasmine Chaney, freshman Sarah Green, junior Kayla Sanchez and sophomore Keia Pinnick ran a time of 3 minutes, 33.72 seconds to automatically qualify for the NCAA Indoor Track Championships and set the third best mark in ASU history.
As announced on Monday, the 4x400 team will be joined in College Station, Texas, next weekend by Chaney’s second event in the women’s 200-meter, sophomore Christabel Nettey in the women’s long jump, and redshirt sophomore Jordan Clarke and redshirt freshman Anna Jelmini in the men’s and women’s shot put, respectively.
McDaniel wasn’t expecting a performance like he saw in Ames, Iowa, on Saturday.
“Most coaches would say that they were expecting that,” McDaniel said, “but I wasn’t expecting them to run as good as they did. It was definitely a surprise.”
The surprise and excitement wasn’t lost on the team.
“I’ve never seen a group of girls so excited,” McDaniel said. “You just looked in their eyes and you could see the blur in them.”
Even with the team’s excitement, the ever-examining coach sees room for improvement.
“They had some of the worst handoffs I’ve seen in my life,” McDaniel said. “If they patch that up, I could see them breaking the school record.”
On the men’s side, Clarke got what ended up being a practice round for next weekend’s championships with his third place throw of 18.15 meters. He was unable to best his season high, an 18.67-meter throw, which was good enough to make him the lone male Sun Devil to qualify.
“There were a couple of things that were off, but with how far I threw with how many things were off, I think it’s still a good thing,” Clarke said. “I hope that I can fix those things and do even better at nationals.”
Even with all the improvements, there were some downfalls in Iowa.
For the women, Chaney was unable to qualify for her third event with a seventh-place finish in the 60-meter hurdles, and while freshman Shaylah Simpson placed third in the pole vault, it wasn’t enough to continue her impressive rookie indoor season.
The only other men’s competitor, redshirt senior Corey Phallen, brought an end to his final indoor season with a second-place finish by clearing five meters in the pole vault.
For the seven athletes on their way to nationals, they hope to further build on the improvements and return with a box set of medals.
Reach the reporter at zcavanag@asu.edu
