By Sierra Webster
USC’s men’s 4×400 relay team came into the Pac-12 championships with the fastest seed time and was projected to take home the title, but the women’s team was projected to be a close second behind Oregon.
However, both USC 4×4 teams took the Pac-12 title in the final events of the championships Sunday at Hayward Field.
USC freshman Michael Norman and juniors Ricky Morgan Jr., Marquis Morris and Alexander Rohani finished in 3 minutes, 7.65 seconds, while the women’s team finished in 3: 29.52.
Norman, the relay team’s only freshman, took the title in the men’s 400-meter dash earlier on Sunday before running the final leg in the 4×4, securing a second title for the Trojans.
“Our plan was just to have a nice strong lead and execute our race plan properly, so they could give me the baton in the lead,” Norman said.
In the final lap, it was freshman against freshman as Arizona’s Zakee Washington trailed closely behind Norman. Washington brought home the runner-up title for Arizona, finishing .61 seconds behind Norman.
USC’s women’s team consisted of freshman Anna Cockrell, junior Kendall Ellis and seniors Cameron Pettigrew and Amalie Iuel. Their seed time was 1.55 seconds behind that of Oregon’s, but they finished the race with a 2.68-second buffer ahead of Oregon.
Freshman Hannah Waller, juniors Raevyn Rogers and Brooke Feldmeier, and senior Ashante Horsley raced for Oregon.
Earlier in the meet, USC’s Ellis and Pettigrew and Oregon’s Waller and Horsley battled it out in the women’s 400-meter dash. Ellis and Pettigrew took first and third place, respectively, a harbinger of what was to come in the relays.
Waller and Horsely took fifth and eighth, respectively.
Oregon’s Rogers placed first in the 800 meters in 2:02.93 seconds earlier on Sunday. Her relay teammate Feldmeier placed fourth in the same race, finishing 2.8 seconds behind Rogers.
Although the Oregon relay team wasn’t able to take the title in the 4×4, Rogers said she looks at losses as a way to improve.
“Regardless, if I win or I lose,” she said, “I still see it as the same race because I still want to learn something from each race that I run in.”
