Day Two of the Alabama Relays Complete
3/17/2006 12:00:00 AM
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| Daryl Aldridge |
The second day of competition at the 2006 Alabama Relays ended Friday night with the meet’s first event winners. Matt VanZandt and Ashley Reyer won the decathlon and the heptathlon, respectively and in the first running event of the competition, Martin Popp took top honors in the men’s 10,000 and Lauren Blankenship won the women’s 10,000.
VanZandt of Troy led wire to wire in the decathlon, scoring 6,883 points to win by 692 over Daryl Aldridge, an Alabama athlete who was competing unattached.
Alabama men’s head coach Harvey Glance was pleased that Aldridge was able to move from fourth to second on the final day.
“For his first decathlon ever, to score over 6,000 points is a great accomplishment,” Glance said. “The thing I saw is that there is room for improvement. So it was a smart thing on our part to redshirt him. He did an outstanding job to hang in there for 10 events and I am expecting great things from him down the road.”
John Kragt, also of Alabama but competing unattached, finished fourth after scoring 6,060 points.
“Kragt did a great job scoring a personal best,” Glance said. “It was good to see both Kragt and Aldridge score over 6,000 points. They are both on their way to good things.”
In the heptathlon, Reyer of Southern Miss won for the second year in a row by making up a 220 point deficit in the 800m, the final event of the heptathlon. The Golden Eagle came from behind to win by just five points over Illinois State’s Lauren Maul. Both Reyer and Maul posted the only two NCAA qualifying marks of the Alabama Relays so far in scoring 5,141 and 5,136 points, respectively, to provisionally qualify.
Lauren Blankenship running unattached for Samford completed the women’s 10,000 meter run in 35:28.05 to win. Erin Sutton of Kennesaw State took second place by finishing the 25 lap event in 36:46.39.
Popp of Drake edged Jason Waters by a little over nine seconds to win the men’s 10,000, finishing the event in 31:31.19.
Both the Alabama men’s and women’s teams will be picking up competition on Saturday now that the multi-events are complete.
“After two days of watching everyone else, it will be nice to watch our athletes compete and compete at home,” Alabama head women’s coach Sandy Fowler said. “Everyone else here has something to prove and we just have to take care of business.”
Fowler is expecting the next two days to bee fun for her athletes.
“It should be a fun weekend for our athletes,” Fowler said. “We have some of them competing in areas they don’t normally compete in. But it could be good for us as coaches as well because we may find someone who can be competitive in other areas for us.”
The Alabama Relays will continue Saturday morning beginning at 8:00 with the men’s hammer throw. Saturday will be an action packed day with 27 events scheduled to take place. Admission is free.
