THE SCHEDULE                 Seattle Pacific at NCAA Indoor Track & Field
                                     Friday-Saturday, March 10-11, 2023
                                     Virginia Beach Sports Center / Virginia Beach, Va.
                                     FRIDAY: First event 11:45 a.m.    Women's 800, 1:40 p.m.
                                     SATURDAY: First event 12:40 p.m.   Women's 800, 2:10 p.m.
                                     All times Pacific
 
 
By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
SEATTLE – "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
 
Presumably, that ancient Chinese proverb had nothing to do with track and field.
 
But perhaps it should have.
 
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
 
So too does a journey of 800 meters.
 
 

The challenge for Vanesa Aniteye was convincing herself …
 
… to take that first step.
 
"I think it's kind of the fact that they challenged me to do something," the Seattle Pacific standout said of the conversations with head coach Karl Lerum and associate head coach / distance coach Chris Reed about doubling up on the 400-meter distance with which she had become closely connected and superbly successful. "So I didn't really want to do it. But you know, it was like, 'Now you're kind of questioning me.'
 
"So I wanted to prove I could do it. That kind of convinced me."
 
Has Aniteye proved it?
 
Has she ever.
 
The fifth-year senior, who has combined the attributes of athletics, academics, marriage, and motherhood into a story like perhaps no other in the long, distinguished history of SPU women's track and field, heads to Virginia for this week's NCAA Division II Indoor Championships as the runner to beat in the 800.
 
Having led the D2 national rankings for all but one week this winter, Aniteye will step to the starting line inside the Virginia Beach Sports Center on Friday afternoon at 1:40 p.m. Pacific time for the preliminary heats. The finals are set for Saturday at 2:10 p.m. Pacific.
 
Aniteye comes in with the top-seeded time of 2 minutes, 7.53 seconds that the recorded on Feb. 11 in Seattle at the Husky Classic.
 
Looming as her primary challenger is Taryn Chapko, a sophomore from Michigan's Grand Valley State University. She's at 2:07.89 which she recorded on Feb. 3, to take over the No. 1 national ranking for eight days until Aniteye's time in the Classic.
 
"I'm excited to race with the best in the nation, for sure," Aniteye said. "You just never know what other people are going to do."
 
LEAVING IT ALL OUT THERE
By all accounts, last May 28 was a day to remember for Vanessa Aniteye.
 
Completing her first – and only – outdoor track season for Seattle Pacific, Aniteye sped to a sixth-place finish in the 400-meter dash at the NCAA Championships.

 

-- Her 53.64 made her the first woman in SPU history to beat the 54-second mark.
-- She broke the school record for the third time in eight weeks.
-- She got onto the national awards podium.
-- She came home as a first-team All-American.
 
"It would have been one thing to go run a 53.9 and be like, 'OK, I'm back in the 53s.,'" Aniteye said after that race. "But to run the best I've ever done, after everything I've been through and having my son and all that … wow."
 
In short, Aniteye maximized everything she had to get everything she could out of that opportunity. But even then …
 
… the only way to win it was to run in the 52s. Shereen Vallabuoy, a junior from Winona State in Minnesota, did exactly that, taking home the gold with a 52.68. Silver was 53.44; bronze was 53.49.
 
"That's the thing: If you can get it, 53 seconds is a special time," SPU head coach Karl Lerum said. "But I think we're all learning that 53 seconds is more common in other parts of the country than here."
 
Added associate head coach / distance coach Chris Reed, "It was her fourth national meet outdoors, and she had yet to make a final. She finally made a final, and she ran brilliantly, and still got beat by five girls. We wouldn't have done anything different. But we thought, 'Man how tough is it to run this well and still get beat by that many people?'
 
"Honestly, sixth was great. But it was heartbreaking to see a kid run that well and still not be in contention."
 
TAKING HER TRAINING TO THE TRAILS
That was the final race of Aniteye's outdoor career. But when she joined Seattle Pacific in the fall of 2021, having competed for Alaska Anchorage from 2017-19, and then giving birth to son Josiah in May of 2020, Aniteye and the coaching staff decided to focus exclusively on outdoor in 2022, and save her final season of indoor eligibility for winter 2023.
 
It was after those outdoor nationals that thoughts of switching to the 800 for that still-to-come indoor season grew from mere conversation to something more serious.
 
"The biggest thing was how well she ran in the 400 last year," Reed said. "She had shown some skill in the 8, but had never trained for it."
 
Lerum agreed Aniteye's performances in the 400, especially at NCAAs, served as an impetus to make the change.
 
"It wasn't as if Vanessa had a bad year last year – she came in and had a fantastic year," he said. "I think maybe that was what allowed her to make the change: Coming out and running to a personal record and seeing how hard it is to lower your 400 times, and then giving the 800 meters a shot."
 
Prior to this winter, Aniteye had run three 800s: once for Anchorage and twice last spring for SPU. Her times were very promising: 2:13.52 in UAA green; 2:12.31 and 2:11.16 in Seattle Pacific maroon.
 
"The level I ran it outdoors, it was easier than an 800 in my mind because I hadn't run it at a competitive, crazy time," Aniteye said. "It was OK. I was just running, so there was no pressure compared to running the 400. It wasn't like the worst pain ever. I just kind of ran with the pack to see where it went."
 
Where it went first was to the cross country course. The thought was that Aniteye would use the fall sport to prepare for the winter.
 
"It was really hard. I think I got to the point where I tried to see the bigger picture, that 'OK, this might help me in my 800.'
 
"But you know, running in the cold and running in Montana (at West Regionals), that's just hard," Aniteye said with  laugh. "In my mind, I was going to do just one or two races, and then I was going to be done. But that was the competitive spirit in me, for sure."
 
Aniteye wound up being among SPU's five scoring runners in all six meets, and was the No. 2 finisher for the team at both the Great Northwest Athletic Conference and NCAA West Regional meets.
 
"I'm sure she didn't completely agree with our thinking the whole way, but she ran cross country, which was important for her," Lerum said. "She was exposed to a different type of training, and I think she found encouragement that she was getting better."
 
Reed agreed, saying, "Ultimately, she was good at it, so she kept doing it."
 
FROM 'OK' TO NCAA
Aniteye's first indoor 800 came on Dec. 10 at the season-opening Spokane Invitational. Her time of 2 minutes 13.04 seconds gave her the early-season Division II national lead. At the time, it was presumed that Aniteye certainly would get faster, but others also would come along with some faster times.
 
"The first one was OK. It was nothing crazy; it wasn't like it was an amazing time," Aniteye said. "The next one (2:10.83 at the UW Indoor Preview on Jan. 14) kind of showed there was room for improvement in this event and see where that could take me."
 
Indeed, that was the start of Aniteye getting faster on a regular basis. No one else around the country ever ran faster than she did until Grand Valley's Taryn Chapko went 2:07.86 on Feb. 3.
 
A week later Aniteye clocked the 2:07.53 that she will take to nationals – a time that is just one-hundredth of a second away from the SPU indoor record of 2:07.52 set by Lynelle Decker in a second-place performance at the 2016 NCAAs.
 
"I'm happy she was able to take advantage of running in as many races as she has (because) indoors is such a truncated season," Lerum said. "For her to be healthy and be able to step on the line in every race, it's so important for her to be able to go into the national meet with some racing experience – even though it's a little unusual in the way she has come about it. Not very many athletes would take to a new event in the final season of their careers."
 
Speaking of racing, that is something Aniteye is looking forward to in Virginia.
 
Except for the opener in Spokane when it actually came down to the final lap for her to pull ahead and win, she has run alone up front almost every step of the way since then: winning her races by margins ranging from 1.3 to 5.5 seconds.
 
"I'm excited to race – let's say that," she said. "A lot of the races I've been in have kind of felt like time trials. So like I said, race and not just run. I'm looking forward to it."
 
So are her coaches.
 
"We're already so proud of what she has been able to do, regardless of the outcome this weekend," Reed said. "If she wins the title, that would be the cherry on top. That would be a storybook ending, and that story should be told over and over and over. But even if she doesn't, her story should still be told over and over."
 
Lerum, who also will be in Virginia Beach, is as rarin' to go for race day as Aniteye is.
 
"I'm very excited that she has taken this path and so excited to see where it leads this weekend – and to be honest, on her running career to follow. I don't think she's going to stop racing. (She's not planning to stop – in fact, Aniteye already has some post-college competition options on her radar.)
 
"It has been a journey."
 
For Vanessa Aniteye, it wasn't a journey of a thousand miles. But regardless of distance – a thousand miles or 800 meters …
 
… it began with a single step.
 

---

 
FOLLOW IT LIVE
Live Webcast and live results will be available both days. On Friday, the live Webcast begins at 11:40 a.m. Pacific time. On Saturday, the Webcast begins at 12:30 p.m. Pacific. Live results will be active for the entirety of each day, with competition starting at 7:00 a.m. PST on Friday with the men's heptathlon and 11:45 a.m. for the rest of the meet, and 7:30 a.m. on Saturday with the women's pentathlon and 12:40 p.m. for the rest of the meet. All of the appropriate links are in the maroon box in the top right corner of this story.

SO WHAT'S THE STORY THIS WEEK?
-- This is the 38th year of the NCAA indoor nationals.
-- It is the first time in Virginia Beach after rotating between Birmingham, Alabama, and Pittsburg, Kansas, since 2015. It will be back in Pittsburg next winter, then Indianapolis in 2025 and Virginia Beach again in 2026.
-- Seattle Pacific has scored team points in 18 of the previous 37 meets.
-- That includes one point last year for Annika Esvelt's 8th-place finish in the 5000 meters.
-- The last 800-meter competitors for the Falcons at NCAAs were Lynelle Decker and Chynna Phan, both in 2016 at Pittsburg. Decker was second and Phan placed 13th.
-- In fact, Decker made the meet all four years she was a Falcon – 2013 to 2016.
-- McKayla Fricker earned an invitation for the 800 in three consecutive seasons (2012-14). She was second in the '14 meet by 49 hundredths of a second to Shawnee Carnett of Concord (W.V). She then beat Carnett for the outdoor championship three months later.
 
SCOUTING THE NCAA INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS
While Vanessa Aniteye is the top seed, a handful of other are legitimately capable of rising up to take the top prize. Aniteye has gotten consistently faster as the season has progressed, starting at 2:13 in December and dropping to her current mark of 2:07.53. Altogether, she has run the 800 half a dozen times this winter.
 
Taryn Chapko of Grand Valley State has done it just twice, but both in the same speedy range: 2:07.89 on Feb. 3 at the Mayo Invitational, then 2:08.68 at the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference meet on Feb. 26.
 
Another one to keep an eye on is sophomore Helen Braybrook of Colorado State Pueblo. Her entry time is 2:08.18 on Feb. 24 at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships. But her actual time on the track that day was 2:11.43. The conversion was made to account for track size and altitude. With just a couple of exceptions, the 800 has been her primary focus all season. Her fastest non-converted time is 2:09.76.
 
Also in the hunt are Adelphi twins Katherine and Isabel Marsh. The seniors are about as close on the oval as they are off it. Katherine is the No. 4 seed at 2:08.57, and Isabel is No. 5 at 2:08.64. Katherine's time came on the fast Boston University track on Feb. 11;  her second-best is 2:11.12 on Jan. 28. Isabel's entry mark was set Feb. 26, also on the Boston track. Her second-best is 2:11.89 on Feb. 11 in Boston.
 
Just outside of the 2:08s is Alaysia Brooks from Ursuline (Ohio). She clocked 2:09.01 at the Great Midwest Athletic Conference meet. That was just her second 800 of the year. Her other time was 2:13.02 on Feb. 4.
 
DORIS HERITAGE FESTIVAL SET FOR MARCH 18
The Falcons are taking this week off from outdoor competition, taking Saturday's PLU Open in Tacoma off their schedule..
 
They will return to action next Saturday at the seventh annual Doris Heritage Track Festival. The meet has a new home this year, moving from West Seattle Stadium down to Renton Memorial Stadium, alongside the Cedar River and adjacent to the Renton Boeing plant.
 
Competition begins at 11:00 a.m. in the field and at noon on the track. All events will be contested except for the 400-meter hurdles, 3000 steeplechase, 10,000 meters, and the hammer.
 
The last event is scheduled for 4:05 p.m., and will be followed by a Senior Day ceremony for seniors from cross country, indoor track, and outdoor track.