The Vols went searching for gold in California at the NCAA outdoor track and field championships, but came short of repeating their 2001 upset title with a seventh-place finish. Arkansas took its first NCAA outdoor title since 1999 with a distance-powered 59 points. Auburn nabbed runner-up honors with 50 points to keep the top-two spots in the SEC. Six of the top-10 teams belong to the SEC.
“Team-wise, our meet was a little disappointing but understandably so with some of the things that happened,” head coach Bill Webb said. “We just had an up and down meet. There were three or four places where we could have scored considerably more points. I did like our effort. Kikaya, running in lane eight, ran a season best. Karl put up an excellent time in the hurdles. We finished seventh, and most teams would love to be there. But this is Tennessee and we’re accustomed to higher, but our guys competed hard.
Tennessee’s NCAA experience was sometimes exhilarating, sometimes perplexing and sometimes frustrating. Despite being stripped of national-caliber talent from the 2002 NCAA indoor championship team and NCAA runner-up outdoor team, the Vols hoped to slip in and nab another golden NCAA trophy while the favorites found their pre-meet claims worthless.
Tennessee did strike gold Thursday with senior captain Stephen Harris’ decathlon triumph and hit a vein of silver in the 4x100m relay courtesy of Jabari Greer, Kikaya, Sean Lambert and Jonathan Wade. Lambert’s surprise 100m dash sixth-place finish Friday and Kikaya’s and Jennings’ fourth and fifth-place Saturday finishes, respectively, helped, but the Tennesseans never found the boom they wanted. Tennessee ran its updated All-America total to seven courtesy of Harris, the 4x100m relay, Kikaya, Jennings and Lambert, plus Leigh Smith and Rocky Danners making the cut as one of the top-eight Americans.
Before the meet began Webb said that the winning team would need luck, have to qualify well for finals and step up when the finals rolled around. For the most part the Volunteer finalists did step up their games in the finals. Problem is there just weren’t enough orange-bedecked bodies claiming lanes in the finals. Additionally, in a meet where finding extra points can be as tough as finding the proverbial mother lode was for California’s historic 49ers, two Vols with NCAA-leading times in Marc Sylvester (800m) and Greer (110m hurdles) came up empty in the points race because of illness and bad fortune. Meanwhile, illness also claimed a scoring chance in decathlete Kevin Thompson.
It became apparent that the intangible yet necessary asset of luck would not visit the Vols this time around. Lady Luck was a frequent visitor at the 2001 NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, as the Vols charged from a darkhorse position to claim the big trophy. Luck was harder to find last June at the NCAA Championships when the favored Vols took second. This week it seems Lady Luck never got on the plane in Knoxville. Yet Tennessee has benefited from good fortune often in the past and the law of averages dictates everyone must pay the piper.
The finish was Tennessee’s lowest since the 2000 NCAA Outdoor meet at Duke, where the Vols placed 15th with 17 points. That meet saw Harris and Danners in their inaugural NCAA Championship. While several Vols didn’t put together the meet they wanted for various reasons, there can be no debate about the accomplishments of the 2003 Vols senior class. The 2003 seniors have rewritten Tennessee’s all-time top-10 lists in their respective events and presided over the program’s renaissance, as an NCAA outdoor, NCAA indoor and two SEC outdoor titles will attest.
Greer, Harris, Leigh Smith and Sylvester will remain in the Golden State with a robust group of former Vols for the USA Nationals next week. Other Vols like Kikaya and Jennings will try their hand in international competition, Kikaya for the Congo and Jennings for Canada, his home before moving to New Jersey. The remaining Vols call it a season.

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