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Freshman Chelsea Johnson reacts after no-heighting in the finals competition of the pole vault in

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SACRAMENTO — Her day cut short after failing to clear the opening bar in the pole vaulting finals, an inconsolable Chelsea Johnson sat dejectedly alongside the runway, tears splattering at her feet.

This certainly wasn’t how the freshman phenom expected to make a splash at her first NCAA Championship meet.

But for Johnson and her UCLA teammates, little about their four days in Sacramento lived up to expectations.

The No. 3 Bruins entered the meet hoping to challenge Texas and eventual champion LSU for the team title, but they were never really a factor. A series of uncharacteristically poor individual performances relegated UCLA to a disappointing eighth place finish, its worst since 1996.

“We had some misfortune, particularly in the field events,” head coach Jeanette Bolden said. “At the national championships you have to be perfect for four days, but things didn’t go our way.”

The Bruin woes began barely an hour into the meet when defending NCAA champion Chaniqua Ross failed to qualify for the finals in the discus.

With dozens of friends and family members on hand, the Elk Grove, Calif. native fouled on two of her three throws, managing only a mediocre 160-foot, 7-inch heave. That mark was more than 20 feet short of her championship-winning throw of a year ago.

“I’ve been openly critical of her all season,” UCLA throws coach Art Venegas said. “Winning came a little too easy for her last year, and I don’t think her concentration was there. But if she had thrown what she had earlier this season, she would have placed decently. That would have at least kept us in the running in the team competition.”

Instead the Bruins went from long shots to having no shot at all.

When defending NCAA shot put champion Jessica Cosby also failed to qualify for the finals early Thursday afternoon, all hope for a top-three finish was snuffed out.

The squad’s title hopes dashed, Bolden waved the white flag that night. She pulled Sheena Johnson, Monique Henderson, and Ysanne Williams from the 4x400-meter relay preliminaries to rest their legs in preparation for their individual events.

“I wanted to do everything I could to leave this meet with an individual championship,” Bolden said. “When things didn’t go our way the first day, we decided that saving Sheena, Ysanne and Monique made the most sense.”

In hindsight, that proved to be the right decision.

While the Bruins’ overmatched alternate relay squad failed to qualify for the finals Thursday night, Johnson more than made up for it the following evening. The junior provided one of the few highlights of the week for the Bruins, posting the second-best collegiate mark of all time (54.24 seconds) in capturing the 400m hurdle championship.

Williams also ran well in the event, overcoming a stress fracture in her right foot to take sixth place in a personal best 56.84 seconds.

“I wasn’t happy with my performance at the Regional meet,” said Williams, who had finished a distant fifth in the hurdles two weeks ago at Stanford. “I wanted to get my head together and get ready for here. I’m so happy that it all worked out.”

But the pair of spectacular performances were not enough to get the Bruins back on track.

On Saturday, Cari Soong struggled to a disappointing fifth place finish in the hammer throw, and that was followed by Chelsea Johnson’s struggles in the pole vault. That night Henderson placed seventh in the 400m and pre-meet favorite Lena Nilsson took second in the 1500m, capping a difficult week for UCLA.

Although the season did not end in the manner she might have hoped, Bolden can take solace in the fact that the program will graduate just two seniors – Ross and Williams – that qualified for the NCAA meet.

“College track is about rebounding,” Bolden said. “We’ve got a young team, and a great freshmen class coming in. Next year I expect we’ll be in the top three.”