ZACH ENGLUND
Sports Assistant
In only its second year of existence at Pepperdine, the women’s track team is still finding its bearings and is looking to build on its first season. New coaches are being hired and new players are being brought in, as the program continues to establish its identity, hoping to one day become a stable successful franchise.
Starting from the ground up is quite a challenge for those managing the team, but luckily they have a head coach by the name of Robert Radnoti, whose passion for the sport of track suggests a bright future for many years to come. However, he has very large shoes to fill, taking the place of Dick Kampmann, who, at 81 years old, retired last spring after serving 17 seasons as head coach of track and field at Pepperdine.
Radnoti worked under Kampmann last year as an assistant, and when he was asked what it’s been like taking the place of such an accomplished coach, he clarified the situation.
“First of all, Coach Kammpman is still here,” he said with a beaming smile on his face. “Even though he’s retired, he’s a volunteer assistant coach. He still comes out almost every day to our team for practices, so it’s not like he’s really gone; he’s just doing less paperwork now. It’s been a very smooth transition because he’s still so involved and we’re great friends.”
Not only is Radnotti receiving help from Kampmann in managing the team, but he also has two other highly treasured assistant coaches whom he said make his job a lot easier. Melvin Jones, an assistant coach also in his first year, is the sprinter and hurdles coach. Radnoti considers Jones “invaluable” because he works on all the technical details with the players, giving Radnoti the opportunity to “…focus on running and organizing the team for now and the future.”
Radnoti’s other assistant coach is Karen Castello, whose job is to coordinate next year’s recruiting class from Northern California while she waits for her daughter to graduate from high school.
“It’s a great fit for her, said Radnoti. “This way we can involve her early on and she’ll be ready to come on board in the summer time.”
One of the aspects of Radnoti’s job that excites him the most is that he is one of the primary foundations of a newly developing sports team, making him a crucial piece to the puzzle in building the team’s present and future identity.
“From my perspective, it’s really exciting,” he said. “Because we’re trying to create something special, so we’ve had some people on the team design uniforms, we’ve designed shirts; we’ve even created our own Project Serve event in Florida this spring break, so we’re establishing some really neat traditions that will last from now until forever.”
With the program and the team being so young, Radnotti’s expectations for what he wants to accomplish differ from other national programs that are much more established. While he still expects his athletes to admirably represent Pepperdine when they compete, he understands that it’s a gradual process that will take some time to develop.
“Our expectations are that everyone participates and each one improves from the previous year,” he said. “A lot of the team is freshmen, so our goal is to have everyone improve on what they’ve done in the past.”
The team had their first preliminary competition over the weekend at the Cal State Northridge All-Comers Meet.
Lauren Carfioli finished with a team-best 2:29.0 in the 800-meter run, followed by teammates Lauren Martinez with 2:31.2, Katie Hyten with 2:34.4, and Abby Uhrinak with 2:34.7.
The best time in the mile run for the Waves went to Brie Carrol at 5:27.7, while Courtney Young and Caitlan White followed after with 5:31.6 and 5:33.6, respectively.
Carrol also finished with the best time for the Waves in the two-mile run, finishing with a 12:03.0 time.
The 4×100 team of Maria Llacuna, Tiara Dole, Allie Becker and Kate Stjernholm finished with a combined time of 52.75. Other team-best times of the day belonged to Dole with 8.25 in the 60-meter and Llacuna’s 9.64 in the 60-meter hurdles.
The team doesn’t compete again until Sat., Feb. 24, when it hosts the WCC Challenge in Malibu.
02-08-2007
