May 28, 2004

BATON ROUGE, La. ----- The UAB 400-meter relay clocked a season-best time of 45.55 time here Friday to advance to the finals of NCAA Midwest Region Championships on the LSU campus.

The Blazers' foursome of Theresa Smith, Stephanie McCauley, Crystal Hunter and Oriana Carter will run in Saturday's final at 5:00 p.m. CT. On Friday, the UAB team ran in the meet's fastest heat, finishing fourth but the Blazers' time advanced them to the Saturday final.

"We came in with the ninth-fastest time," said UAB head coach Ray Stanfield, "but none of the girls have been in a regional or in any NCAA championship competition. We had two freshmen running and you could see they were feeling some nerves.

"This is by far the toughest region in the country for sprints," said Stanfield, "and we faced some tough competition with schools like LSU and Alabama. We were a little shaky on one of the handoffs, but the girls did what they had to. Anytime you start running and training in January and you're still competing in almost June, you've had a good year."