N.C. comes home with Relays win

Beth George was a Philadelphia prep running star. She won five individual state championships with North Penn high school. She ran on a 4x800 meter team that had the third-fastest time in the nation. But she never won a gold watch in her backyard meet, the Penn Relays. Until yesterday. George, the lone senior on North Carolina's distance medley team, ran a 3:26.4 lead off 1,200-meter leg to give the Tar Heels an early lead. Teammates Edi Ntuen, Alice Schmidt and Shalane Flanagan took care of the rest, and North Carolina won by 12 seconds in 11:03.52. "It's a dream come true," George said. "Ever since I was in high school, all I wanted to do was come back and win at Penn Relays. And to do it the way we did, with a huge gap, it was pretty awesome. It's everything I have always dreamed it would be." And besides those watches, George and her Tar Heel teammates get an added distinction -- they are the first to win the college women's DMR since Jim Tuppeny's name has been attached to it. Penn announced last week that the college women's DMR would be named after Tuppeny, the former Penn and Villanova coach and Relays director from 1970-1987 who passed away in November. Carolina coach Michael Whittlesey competed against Tuppeny's 'Nova squads for 10 years as an athlete at Connecticut. "It's a huge honor to win at Penn Relays," Whittlesey said. "And it's an even [more] special honor to win this year." Betty Tuppeny believed UNC's win would have pleased her father. "I think he would have been proud," Betty Tuppeny said. "He's up there in the premium seats watching." * Alan Webb, the senior from South Lakes High School (Va.) who became only the fourth high schooler ever to break four minutes in the mile, will likely run in three races this weekend. Webb said yesterday that he will, as expected, anchor the distance medley -- scheduled to take place at 5:05 p.m. today. Webb will also anchor South Lakes' 4x800, which will run a qualifying race at 9:20 a.m. this morning. The championship for the 4x800 is at 3:05 p.m. on Saturday. * Although Penn couldn't quite grab any of it, there was a little Ivy success floating around yesterday. Two women from Harvard won Penn Relays watches yesterday and a pair of twins from Yale garnered medals. The Crimson's Dora Gyoffry won the college women's high jump with a leap of 6'3 1/4". And while she was busy jumping, her teammate, Brenda Taylor, won the college women's 400 meter hurdles in 56.11 seconds. "This is the biggest meet in the Northeast," Taylor said. "It's a mental boost when you run your best, but to come out on top is icing on the cake. To perform well under pressure [and then] win, it's a little extra dessert." Meanwhile, Yale twin sisters Kate and Laura O'Neill finished third and fourth, respectively, in the college women's 5,000. * Boys & Girls High School had quite a day yesterday. In the morning, the school from Brooklyn, N.Y., posted the fastest 4x800 qualifying time of the day -- and the sixth-fastest U.S. prep time ever. Seven hours later, Boys & Girls came back and won the high school girls' DMR in 11:53.64, after leading virtually the entire race. Tameka Johnson, Meisve Francis and Stacey Ann Livingston gave anchor Akilah Vargas a 10-second cushion, and unlike at Indoor Nationals -- when she relinquished a 100-meter lead -- Vargas easily held on to this advantage. "At Nationals, I was the one that messed up, and I couldn't let anyone catch me," Vargas said. "I was so scared. I don't know how we did it." The girls' high school DMR was supposed to feature San Lorenzo Valley (Calif.), a team that set the national collegiate record at last year's Relays. However, despite returning all four runners, San Lorenzo Valley finished sixth -- 26 seconds slower than last year. * It was only her second steeplechase race ever, but it sure didn't look like that for Arkansas' Lilli Kleinmann. Kleinmann won the 3,000-meter steeplechase yesterday in 10:01.52 -- the second fastest collegiate time of the year, and a time that was 18.49 seconds faster than the second-place finisher. "I've been waiting 10 years for this race," Kleinmann said. "I used to do the hurdles when I was younger. It was great preparation." * Yesterday's attendance was 24,411. Last year's Thursday attendance was 20,456.

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