BATON ROUGE – Lady Tiger track and field recruit Alex Gochenour went out with a bang in her final Drake Relays appearance as a senior at Logan Magnolia High School after winning a pair of event crowns while competing in four events during the three-day meet held this past weekend in Des Moines, Iowa.
While competing at Drake Stadium, Gochenour won gold medals in the high school girls’ 100-meter hurdles and long jump, while also finishing runner-up in the 400-meter hurdles and appearing in the finals of the 100-meter dash over the course of three days of competition.
“Competing in the Drake Relays is like nothing else I’ve ever done. The atmosphere and crowd are unlike any other place that I’ve been,” Gochenour said. “That track is my favorite place to run in the world. It seems like everything good that has happened to me in this sport has happened on that track.”
The future Lady Tiger multi-event star kicked off the meet with a victory in the long jump as she recorded a new wind-legal personal record in the event with a top mark of 18 feet, 2 inches on her third jump of the preliminary round. She jumped with a legal tailwind of 1.0 meters per second on Thursday afternoon.
Gochenour’s previous long jump PR of 18-1 ¾ in the long jump was set during the heptathlon at the 2009 USA Youth Outdoor Track & Field Championships during her sophomore season.
“My win in the long jump was a bit of a shock. It’s not something I expected,” Gochenour said. “It’s truly an amazing feeling anytime you win an event at the Drake Relays. Setting my personal best was also very exciting for me. It just so happened to be the only jump I didn’t scratch, so I made it count.”
She then fought through difficult conditions at Drake Stadium on Friday afternoon to take the 100 hurdles title by one tenth of a second over her nearest competitor as she crossed the finish line in 14.79 seconds in a race that was run into a very strong headwind of 2.9 meters per second. Most events held on the track on Friday were run into winds of 3.0 or more, providing athletes difficult conditions in which to compete.
Gochenour is an accomplished hurdler at the prep level as she owns a wind-legal personal best of 13.89 in a silver-medal winning performance in the open 100-meter hurdles final during the 2010 USATF National Junior Olympics Track & Field Championships as a junior last summer.
“The wind was a big obstacle for us on Friday,” Gochenour said. “It was hard to get my rhythm in the 100 hurdles. I was happy with my performance overall, but was still hoping for a better time. The hurdles didn’t have the pressure or build up as last year. It still felt great to get the win.”
After also competing in the Drake Relays final of the high school girls’ 100-meter dash in Friday’s events at Drake Stadium, Gochenour returned to the track on Saturday to take second place in the 400 hurdles.
Gochenour is certainly one of the jewels of the Lady Tigers’ recruiting class for the 2012 season, after she signed with the team in February as the nation’s No. 1-ranked prep heptathlete for the Class of 2011.
She scored a personal best of 5,300 points at the 2010 USA Junior Outdoor Championships as a junior for the No. 1 ranking in the heptathlon at the high school level for the 2010 season. Her performance earned a spot on Team USA that competed at the 2010 IAAF World Junior Championships. Gochenour secured an impressive 10th-place finish while competing against the world’s premier youth heptathletes in the meet in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.