The Jasmine Chaney train is on a one-way track with no signs of changing course.
The redshirt senior took the 200-meter and 400-meter women’s individual titles for the ASU track and field team at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Indoor Championships in Seattle on Friday and Saturday.
“MPSF titles are hard for me,” Chaney said. “It’s about getting ready for the big championships. The MPSF titles are just another notch on my belt, but I don’t really care about titles. I’m not a title person.”
Chaney won the 200-meter with a time of 23.77 seconds and the 400-meter with a time of 53.68 seconds.
Her finishes earned the Sun Devils 20 of their 92 team points, which placed the No. 25 women’s team in their fourth-place. Pac-10 foe and No. 1 Oregon defended its MPSF women’s title with 133 points.
Chaney’s run in the 400-meter race was her most difficult of the day, she said.
“I was kind of fatigued. I had just run the hurdles,” Chaney said. “I just kind of went out there and did it. You really don’t have time to think about being tired.
“At practice, I have back to back to back reps. [At the MPSFs] I get 30 to 40 minutes in between races. I have no reason to be tired going from race to race.”
Chaney’s attitude has shown her to be a team leader, and a prime example of what ASU coach Greg Kraft has been looking for this season.
“It’s a process,” Kraft said. “There’s so much built on rest and recovery. It’s not the fastest guy. It’s the fastest guy throughout all the races.”
While the most impressive, Chaney’s performance wasn’t the only thing Kraft saw this weekend from his team.
“Jasmine Chaney was very good this week as she has been all season,” Kraft said, “but we’re seeing some people emerge and step up.”
One example was sophomore Christabel Nettey, who posted the No. 2 all-time ASU mark in the triple jump, a rare event for her, with a jump of 12.13 meters. The jump also automatically qualified Nettey for the NCAA Indoor Championships.
On the other end, the men’s team was not as successful and finished in fifth with 72.5 points and no individual titles.
No. 6 Stanford took the men’s team title with 107.5 points.
The men had two extremely close second-place finishers with junior Daniel Auberry in the 60-meter sprint and redshirt sophomore Jordan Clarke in the shot put.
Auberry finished with a time of 6.84 seconds in the 60-meter, which was a mere 0.04 seconds behind the first-place finisher, and Clarke’s throw of 17.8 meters was just one centimeter shy of the first-place throw of 17.81 meters.
No matter how devastating, the tight finishes and improving times of the middle-distance runners are important for the men’s side.
“Those were the things that we needed to see happen, and they bode well for our outdoor season,” Kraft said.
