ON THE MARK?
Lobo Kerr seeks to break NCAA’s 1,500 record
Lobo Josh Kerr will take aim at the NCAA record for 1,500 meters
On June 6, 1981, Villanova’s Sydney Maree won the NCAA men’s 1,500 meters in a time of 3 minutes, 35.30 seconds.
Almost 37 years later, that time remains the NCAA record.
Not so fast, says Josh Kerr — figuratively speaking.
Friday, at the Bryan Clay Invitational in Azusa, Calif., the University of New Mexico sophomore from Edinburgh, Scotland, will seek to erase Maree’s name from the record book.
He’ll do so, Kerr said this week, with all due respect. That the record has stood for so long, and that it was Maree who set it, are what make it worth the attempt.
“It would mean a lot to me,” said Kerr, the defending NCAA 1,500-meter champion. “It’s a very old record, and it’s Sydney Maree who has it, who’s done some great things and run very fast. So to break that would be huge for me.”
Of that, there’s no doubt Kerr is capable.
Last year at the Clay meet, Kerr won the 1,500 in a personal-best 3:35.99 — the sixth-fastest clocking in NCAA history. At the time, he didn’t know what the record was or how close he’d come to breaking it.
“I was pretty oblivious to that,” he said. “Obviously I knew I was going to run fast, but everything has to go right on the day, so I didn’t have those big goals in mind.
“I was just wanting to go win that race.”
Kerr, of course, wants to win again.
But, UNM coach Joe Franklin said, this will not be a tactical race where winning is everything and the time doesn’t matter.
Kerr’s winning time in last year’s NCAA championships was 3:43.03, well off the personal best he’d established in Azusa. He’d run a qualifying heat two days before.
“We have very few chances to really try to run fast, because (usually) it’s all about winning championships,” Franklin said. “This meet over the last four or five years has produced some incredible times.”
Accordingly, Franklin helped assemble an outstanding 1,500-meter field.
If Kerr doesn’t break the record, someone else might.
“We kind of took it on our shoulders,” Franklin said, “to try and build a race that’s the best in the country and see if we can create something where whoever wins the race is gonna have a chance at that collegiate record.”
Conceivably, Kerr could not win the race and still break Maree’s NCAA record. Professional runners as well as collegians are entered. Kerr is more than OK with that. “I think having a class field is definitely going to make sure that everyone’s on their game,” he said. “I think the pacers (better known, perhaps as ‘rabbits’) have a very great job to do, and if they get it right, then we have the ability to run extremely quick.”
Friday’s race will be Kerr’s first of the outdoor season after successfully defending his NCAA indoor mile title in March. It will help determine where and when he races between now and the Mountain West Championships (May 9-12 in Clovis, Calif.), NCAA Regionals (May 24-26 in Sacramento, Calif.) and NCAA Championships (June 6-9 in Eugene, Ore.).
Beyond the collegiate season, Kerr will attempt to make Great Britain’s team for the 2018 European Championships in Berlin in August.
This week, though, there’s no question where his focus is.
“Getting that NCAA record,” he said, “is definitely the goal on my mind right now.”
THE MAREE CONNECTION: In 1984 at the U.S. Olympic Trials, Maree edged Los Lunas native Chuck Aragon by three-hundredths of a second for the third and final Olympic berth in the 1,500 meters.
If that weren’t heartbreaking enough for Aragon, Maree then suffered a knee injury in training. Still hoping to recover in time to run in the Olympics, Maree did not withdraw prior to the deadline that would have allowed Aragon to replace him.
Maree did not recover sufficiently to run in the Olympics, and only two Americans — Jim Spivey and Steve Scott — represented the U.S. in Los Angeles.