UW's Leffler Wins Pac-10 800 Crown -- WSU's Kapkory, Carpenter Win Conference 1,500 Championships

EUGENE, Ore. - Washington junior Mitch Leffler won the 800 meters and Adam Setliff finished second in the discus, leading the Husky men to a sixth-place finish at the Pac-10 Conference track and field championships yesterday.

UCLA won the men's title with 123 points, followed by Oregon's 103. USC was third with 80 and Washington State, the defending champion, was fourth with 79 1/2. Washington had 54 1/2 points.

Oregon won the women's crown with 122 points. Second-place Arizona had 90. Washington State's women, led by Jennifer Carpenter's title in the 1,500 meters, placed fifth with 58 points, the most points earned by a WSU squad at the conference meet. Washington's women placed eighth with 33 points.

Josephat Kapkory of Washington State added a 1,500-meter crown to the 10,000-meter title he won Friday. He also placed sixth in the 5,000. Defending NCAA 1,500 champion Samuel Kibiri of WSU withdrew after injuring his left ankle in the steeplechase Friday.

Leffler, from Newport High School in Bellevue, outraced pre-race favorite Shannon Lemora of Oregon to win the 800 in 1 minute, 49.05 seconds, a career best. He beat Lemora by two-tenths of a second. Chris McBride of Washington State was third.

"I've been training for this race all year," said Leffler, a third-place finisher last season. "The race was exactly how I wanted it, staying in the pack and setting it up for the last 100 meters.

"Shannon (Lemora) was the leader coming in and I knew it would come down to a sprint at the end with the crowd cheering for him. I watched the videotape of our earlier race all this week. . . . The tape reminded me what I needed to do this time."

Leffler is the first UW men's conference champion since Rick Noji won the high jump in 1990.

Setliff had a second-place throw of 195 feet, 3 inches. Ramon Jimenez-Gaona of California, a native of Paraguay, set a meet and South American record with a throw of 210-11.

"I was focusing on my own performance, but when the guy throws 210 feet and the stadium erupts it's kind of hard not to notice," said Setliff, who will compete against Jimenez-Gaona again at the NCAA meet June 3-6 in Austin, Texas.

"Ramon had a good meet and I had a not so good meet, but that was just today. I'll just have to move on to the NCAAs and hope the tables turn."

Washington's Neil Panchen finished third in the 5,000 meters. Arizona's Marc Davis won in 14:14.22. Oregon's Pat Haller, a Lynnwood High School graduate, placed second in 14:15.18.