First weekend of outdoor season full of personal bests for Cougars

LOS ANGELES – Derek Sorensen and Ashton Riner highlight a day full of personal records as the BYU track and field team completed the final day of events at the USC Trojan Invitational and the Hornet Invitational on Saturday.

“I am really proud of how the team competed across all the categories,” BYU head coach Ed Eyestone said. “They looked really good, and the coaches did a great job of getting the team prepared. We were performing at a very high level and that is something you always want to see, especially at the first meet of the season.”

Sorensen earned two personal records on Saturday at the USC Trojan Invitational. He took first place in the 100m with a time of 10.46 and ran a 20.97 in the 200m to finish second. Teammate Clark Brown ran a 10.49 and finished just behind Sorensen for second place in the 100m to give the Cougars the top two finishers in the event.

Riner threw her first javelin in a BYU uniform for a meet-best 48.13m and now ranks No. 7 on the school’s all-time record list. The freshman’s first-place mark should be good enough to qualify for NCAA regionals. Payge Cuthbertson took second in the javelin with a throw of 45.70m, a mark that is better than the average regional-qualifying distance from the past five years.

Alyssa Dalton clocked a 13.54 in the 100m hurdles and finished second in her first meet back competing for BYU after missing last year with a medical redshirt. Her time has qualified for regionals in years past and puts her in a good position to potentially compete at the NCAA West Preliminaries for the third time in her career.

The Cougars had three of the top four finishers in the men’s 800m with David Graham taking first with a time of 1:51.22. Marcus Dickson ran a 1:52.55 to take second and Max Scheible earned a personal-best 1:54.18 to finish fourth.

Anna Camp took first in both the 800m and mile at the USC Invitational. She set a career-record 2:08.12 in the 800m and ran a 4:44.13 in the mile. Madelyn Dickson came in six-hundredths of a second behind Camp (4:44.19) to take second and Kate Hunter finished fourth with a personal-record 4:50.51.

Keesha Miller and Haley Rogers were only separated by hundredths of a second in their top-three finish in the 100m dash. Miller clocked an 11.93 to place second and Rogers ran an 11.98 for third. Rogers also competed in the 200m where she broke her career record with a time of 24.49.

Jefferson Jarvis competed well for BYU in the discus and shot put, finishing in the top three in both events. Jarvis threw for 17.06m in the shot put to take second and finished third in the discus with a mark of 52.08m.

A small group of Cougars containing the jumpers, multi-event athletes, pole vaulters and some middle-distance athletes competed at the Hornet Invitational at Sacrament State on Friday and Saturday.

Kevin Nielsen competed in the decathlon for BYU at the Hornet Invitational and finished with top-three marks in the first five events (100m, long jump, shot put, high jump and 400m) to end day one in the lead with 3828 points. Nielsen picked up where he left off on the second day of the decathlon and had the second-best marks in both the 110m hurdles and discus throw but ended up not competing in the final three events (pole vault, javelin and 1500m).

Andrea Stapleton-Johnson took first in the high jump for the Cougars with a jump of 1.76m and Nicole Lord finished third with a height of 1.73m. Pole vaulters Sierra Hansen and Elise Machen-Romney tied for third in the event with a clearance of 3.75m. Both cleared the height on their first attempts but failed to clear 3.90m in three attempts.

A recap of Friday's events can be found here.

For full results of the USC Trojan Invitational, click here.

For full results of the Hornet Invitational, click here.

The Cougars will travel next to compete in the Aztec Invitational in San Diego on Friday, March 23.