Scott Swanson
It wasn’t the finish Dakotah Keys was hoping for Thursday at the end of the NCAA Division I National Championships decathlon, but the Sweet Home graduate was ready to move on.
Keys, a sophomore for the Ducks, was 11th overall, with 7817 points, in a field of 21 finishers after a frustrating two days in which he never found the spark that won him the Pac-12 championship on May 5, in which posted big PR’s in the final two events, the javelin and the 1500, to edge Washington’s Jeremy Taiwo by a point.
Taiwo, a senior, finished second this time, with 8239 points, behind Texas freshman Johannes Hock, who scored 8267. Hock, 20, from Germany, entered the 1500-meter run, the final of the 10-event, two-day competition, with a 171-point lead over Taiwo in what was the deepest NCAA decathlon ever. Six competitors finished over 8000, 11 over 7800 points.
Hock’s winning score of 8293 points was a meet record.
Third place went to UCLA junior Marcus Nilsson, of Sweden, who scored 8104.
“It was disappointing,” Keys said of his final score. “At the Pac-12 championships I was kind of on a high. Everything was going good. Here I was just kind of flat.”
Keys won one event, the javelin, with a throw of 214-3.
He finished Day 1 in 15th with 3,941 points, the highlight coming with a personal best in the shot put of 13.28 meters (43-7).
Keys is among the qualifiers for the 2013 USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships June 21-22 in Des Moines, Iowa.
He acknowledged that he’s still relatively inexperienced in championship-level multi-events, and the NCAAs was “a learning experience.”
“I’m learning not to be affected by one bad event, but to move forward,” he said.