The night of the women's pole vault finals was marred by ugly conditions in Des Moines, Iowa. But for junior Katie Morgan, the blistering headwinds were a beautiful sight.

While the weather threw off the other competitors, Morgan's focus and concentration landed her atop the podium with a national title in hand.

Morgan's title proved to be the crowing moment for the Cal track and field team at the NCAA Outdoor Championships this past week.

Her win provided the women's squad with 10 points to give the team a total of 11. The total tied the Bears for 22nd place nationally.

The Cal men, meanwhile, managed to make the scoreboard by scoring a single point to tie for 71st place.

Coming into the meet, the Bears likely did not expect Morgan to ascend to the top of collegiate pole vaulting. She had been steadily improving over the year and repeatedly broken the Cal school record, but many of her competitors had higher personal-bests.

Luckily for Morgan, the weather leveled the playing field.

"It's a very difficult place to jump, the winds are very tricky," pole vaulting coach Scott Slover said. "Knowing that, I thought she had a very good chance to win because mentally she is so tough. And you know, conditions just don't bother her, and that's just a huge advantage in pole vault."

The advantage, coupled with Morgan's consistency, resulted in four successful jumps in a row to reach 13 feet, 9.25 inches. Three other athletes were also able to hit that mark as well, but they were unable to do without missing at least one jump.

"Everybody knows, if you don't miss, you force people to jump high to beat you," Slover said. "They have to beat you on height, rather than misses. And it puts a lot of pressure on athletes in big meets if you go in flawless ... (The other three athletes) had to jump 14-1.5, close to their (personal-record) to beat, Katie."

Since none of the other athletes were able to reach 14-1.5, Morgan came away from Des Moines a national champion.

Apart from the women's pole vault, the Bears underperformed at nationals.

Junior discus thrower Martin Maric, who was coming off a win at the NCAA West Region Championship, expected to place in the top three in his event. Instead, Maric placed 8th by throwing for 185-10 on his final try of the meet.

For most athletes, such a throw would be a tremendous achievement, but for Maric, the mark registers as his season-low.

The eight-place finish did at least give the Cal men its lone team point at nationals and also garnered Maric All-American honors.

The Bears were also expecting senior All-American Alysia Johnson to be a key contributor. The 800m runner won the national title last year in a sub-two minute time.

The week started out promising for Johnson -- she ran her race in 2:06.7 to place third in preliminaries on Wednesday.

However, the race proved to be quite costly as it resulted in a minor foot injury. The injury did not heal in time for the semifinals race and prematurely ended Johnson's collegiate career.

"Alysia's foot was sore, but she could have ran today," director of track and field Tony Sandoval said in a statement to CalBears.com. "It would have been sorer if she ran today, and then even more if she ran in the final. She would have had to take some time off to let her foot heal with the Olympic Trials just a couple weeks away.

"We just didn't want to risk anything with the trials right around the corner."

Tags: NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS