AZUSA, Calif. – Morgan Jensen capped a long day for the Utah track & field team at the Bryan Clay Invitational Thursday night inside Cougar Athletic Stadium with a second-place finish behind a huge PR time of 33:36.90.
In the heptathlon, Rachel Whipple finished the first day of competition in fifth-place through four events after she captured the 200m dash event victory with a time of 25.67 to give her 2756 total points – which was just 173 points behind the day’s leader (2929).
The Bountiful native opened the day taking sixth in the 100m hurdles with a time of 15.24 (+2.4). She then posted a mark of 1.49m (4-10.5) in the high jump before recording a distance of 9.70m (31-10) in the shot put.
Later in the evening on the track, Karli Branch was the first to toe the line for Utah in the 3000m steeplechase. The Draper native started out with the lead pack and for about 300m led the pack before falling back a bit to finish the race with a new personal best time of 10:56.14 – which was better than her previous mark by nearly three seconds.
Jensen closed out the night for Utah running in her first 10,000m race of the season and the second this outdoor season for the Utes. The Sandy product hung with the top four runners until about the 11:15 mark when she took the lead sitting just a couple steps behind the lead pacer.
She would then lead the pack as the group hit the 16:53 mark halfway through the race and would hold onto that lead for the majority of the race until UC Irvine’s Sameen Andar overtook her at the 28:15 mark with about 1600m left to go. Jensen did her best to keep within striking distance from Andar but just couldn’t catch up and finished a couple seconds behind to take second with a new personal best time of 33:36.90.
Jensen crushed her all-time mark by 47 seconds and bumped herself up one spot on the all-time list from eighth to seventh, passing Susannah Hurst’s time of 33:55.98 from 2014.
Friday’s action will be a little more hectic for the Women of Utah with the rest of the travel group competing between the two meets at Mt. SAC Relays and the Bryan Clay Invitational.
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