If you use the term “winning ugly” to describe a performance in which you: (a) win an ACC individual title, (b) set an ACC Championship meet record and (c) post the top individual mark in school history, it can only mean one thing.
Your name is Laura Gerraughty.
On Thursday at the ACC Indoor Track and Field Championship, the North Carolina senior managed to check all three of those items off her list at once with a 70 foot-3 3/4 inch winning effort in the women’s weight throw.
But Gerraughty, whose best event is actually the shot put — she owns the top indoor mark in NCAA history — maintained that she could have thrown even farther.
“My technique was pretty horrid,” she said. “My coach kept saying, ‘You just gotta fix, and you’ll launch it!’ and I’m like, ‘I’m trying to do it!’ It was ugly as sin, but I just had so much adrenaline that I … just willed it out there.
“I gotta keep looking ahead because I still have about a meter gap that I’ve got to fill. … I still want to see what I can do and put myself in a good position going into NCAAs in a couple weeks.”
If Gerraughty is able to boost her weight throw by a full meter in time for the March 12 national meet, she will likely be able to lay claim to one of the two or three best marks in the country. As it stands now, the 2004 Olympian sits in sixth place on the national list and is just 3 1/4 inches behind Miami’s Kimberli Barrett for fifth.
“I’d rank (Gerraughty and teammate Vikas Gowda) going in (the NCAAs) in the top five in each event,” UNC coach Dennis Craddock said. “When you think about all the 300 universities in the country that run track … that’s a pretty elite group.”
As for Gowda, his performance in the ACC meet was equally impressive. In fact, UNC’s other Olympian matched Gerraughty's achievement by winning the men’s shot put — recording a meet record of 64-3 3/4 that doubled as the best effort in UNC history.
