Junior La’Shana Verdon won two of the three heptathlon events to claim the 2006 Big West heptathlon title while Brittany Ricketts and Long Beach State’s Jamie Cuthbert-Allen tied for second May 7 at the Matador Track Complex.
Verdon, who was in fifth-place after four events, took the long jump with a season-best 19-3.25 and also won the 800 meters in another season-best 2:17.44. She finished fifth in the javelin with a mark of 112-7 which gave her 2,228 points and 4,960 points for the championship which was enough to beat Ricketts and Cuthbert-Allen by five points.
Ricketts posted 1,857 points to finish second with a career-best 4,955 points. She finished second in the long jump with a mark of 19-1.25, was eighth in the javelin with a throw of 91-1 and finished ninth in the 800 meters with a time of 2:35.27.
Cuthbert-Allen finished third in all three events on Sunday as she recorded a distance of 18-7.75 in the long jump, a mark of 121-2 in the javelin and a time of 2:23.23 in the 800 meters.
With the first and second place finish, the Matadors pick up 17 points in the first event of the 2006 Big West Championships. Long Beach State, behind Cuthbert-Allen and Lauren Reiner’s fifth-place finish, earned 11 points while Lauren Collins picked up five points for UC Irvine with her fourth-place finish.
With a sixth-place finish, Danielle DeBeaubien earned three points for UC Santa Barbara, Lacey Welborn finished seventh to give two points for Cal State Fullerton and Katie Robbins of Cal Poly picked up a point for the Mustangs with an eighth-place finish. CSUN’s Tori Curtis was 10th with a score of 3,400 points.
On the men’s side, junior Justin Johnson, who led the decathlon after scoring 3,904 points, won the 110-meter hurdles but finished second for the second straight year in the Decathlon. Johnson finished the championships with a total of 7,135 points while Chris Richardson of Long Beach State won the title with 7,194 points, 59 points in front of Johnson and 417 points in front of James Nunno of Cal Poly, who finished in third place.
Johnson ran 14.33 to win the 110-meter hurdles and threw 123-11 to finish fourth in the discus. He also finished tied for third in the pole vault at 12-11.5, was eighth in the javelin at 133-1 finished fifth in the 1,500 meters with a time of 4:48.61.
Nunno took third with 6,777 points followed by Shawn Maghzi from UC Irvine (6,585), Jeremy Vukasinovic of Cal Poly (6,511), Matt Turner of Cal State Fullerton (6,463), Ken Centers of UC Santa Barbara (6,367), Trent Richert of UC Irvine (6,109), Peter Briones of UC Irvine (5,808) and Tyson Gay of Long Beach State (5,261).
Justin Satzman can be reached at sports_sundial@csun.edu.
