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sports:
women's volleyball
Haneef ready for
NCAAs
By Michael Watanabe
On-line Forty-Niner
Long Beach State
will be represented in the NCAA National Indoor Championships
by high-jumper Tayyiba Haneef on Friday in Fayetteville, Ark.
"She is going
to be a top contender based on [her] past performance,"
Track and Field Head Coach Andy Sythe said.
Haneef, a junior
from Laguna Hills, has a personal outdoor best of 6-foot-1
1/4 inches while the LBSU record is 6-foot-4 inches. Last
year, she competed in her first NCAA championship where she
placed sixth. Her performance earned her NCAA All- American
honors.
"This year,
she will try to repeat her All-American standing," Sythe
said. "She will try to vie for the top three this year."
She was an outdoor
All American last year, and is undefeated this year. Haneef
placed 10th in the Olympic trials last summer and qualified
for the Big West Conference Championship and the NCAA Provisional.
On top of this,
Haneef is on the volleyball team, second on the 2000 squad
in kills, and third in blocks.
In this year's
championships, Haneef will compete against favorite Dora Gyorffy,
a Harvard senior. Gyorffy is ranked No. 1 with a mark of 6-foot-5
inches. Haneef is ranked No. 15 and jumped a last year's indoor
best of 5-foot-11 1/2 inches.
Other schools competing
include the women's UCLA and Texas University teams, and the
men's Stanford and University of Arkansas teams.
The indoor competitions
differ from the outdoor competitions. The indoor events help
to prepare the team for the outdoor season, said Sythe.
In outdoor competitions,
environmental conditions, such as the wind at your back, can
adversely affect performance.
The facilities
for indoor competition are smaller than outdoor facilities.
Though the high jump is not affected, the track events are
dramatically altered.
The championships
will be held in the Randal Tyson Track Center at the University
of Arkansas. Haneef will jump on Friday, at 2 p.m. (12 p.m
PST)
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