March 4, 2004
Ashley Patten already knows what it feels like to come from behind. She also knows she's pretty good at it.
The sophomore 800-meter runner on the Missouri track and field team was stuck in a pack at last weekend's Big 12 Championships in Lincoln, Neb.
"The girls on the outside alley kind of pushed everybody else to the back when they cut over," Patten said. "Honestly, I just didn't have really good position at the beginning of the race.
"After I got pushed to the back, I kind of felt like I was in a box. But I just knew I shouldn't surge too soon."
Patten decided to run with the pack for the first three laps before finding a crevice and making her move.
"On the last 150 meters, I finally just saw a place to go and just moved around everybody on the straightaway," she said. "It just happened to work out the way I wanted it to."
Patten made it to the outside and passed six racers down the stretch on her way to her first Big 12 title. Her time of 2 minutes, 8.49 seconds was good enough for a NCAA provisional qualifying time.
"She's a good big-meet racer," MU assistant coach Rebecca Wilmes said. "There's a lot of people that are fast out there, but Ashley's gift is that she's able to deliver when it matters at the big meets."
Last year, Patten finished fourth in the Big 12 in the 800 indoors and second outdoors.
Patten, who won a Junior National Championship in the 800 this summer, will try to improve her time Saturday at the Cyclone Last Chance Qualifier in Ames, Iowa.
Wilmes said she thinks Patten will need to run the race in about 2:06 to make the NCAA cut.
"I really think she's ready," Wilmes said. "Just the stuff that Ashley's done workout-wise really indicates that she's ready to do that."
Patten will be joined by an estimated 15 MU track members, six of which already have provisional marks.
On average, only the top 14 to 16 athletes in each event will compete in the NCAA Championships.
Patten also has a chance to go to the NCAA Championships as a member of the distance medley relay team that has the 12th-best qualifying time (11:18.24) in the national.
The rest of the DMR team is made up of Jill Peterson (1,200), Jessica Stockard (400) and Amanda Bales (mile).
The MU coaching staff decided not to run Patten in the DMR at the Big 12 Championships, but it still won the conference title with freshman Allison Werner in the lineup.
"It was a great coaching decision," Patten said about the choice to not have her run in the DMR. "Fortunately, we had Allison Werner. ... She runs a great 800 leg and doubles really well.
"I was really fortunate to have someone else on the team be able to run the 800 leg and to give me the opportunity to focus on my prelims and then the finals the next day."
That same approach will be taken this weekend. The DMR team will not compete - feeling confident their time is good enough to claim a spot in the NCAA Championships.
Instead, Patten and Bales, who has qualified in the mile and the 3,000 meter, will concentrate on improving their individual times. Bales likely will only run the mile, in which she has the 21st-best time (4:45.00) in the nation, and not the 3,000 meter (28th, 9:30.38).
Wilmes, who works with the distance runners, is trying to put her athletes in the best possible positions to succeed.
"We just felt like we had to pick one," she said. "And that's what we chose to do, since we have a distance medley that has a good shot to get in. So we're going to sit on it."
Said Patten: "She's just making smart coaching decisions on deciding to ride the DMR and putting us in some individual events to try to go that way, too."
Other Tigers who will try to improve their qualifying marks are shot putters Conrad Woolsey - who has the 12th-best shot put in the nation at 61 feet, 7 inches - and Janae Strickland (20th, 52-8) and weight thrower Holly Scherder (31st, 61-10?).