Track and Field Completed First Day of Mountain State Games

Friday, February 6

Pocatello, Idaho

TBA

University of Utah

Mountain State Games

Track and Field Completed First Day of Mountain State Games

2/6/2009 12:00 AM | Track & Field

Feb. 6, 2009

Complete Results in PDF Format

POCATELLO, IDAHO - The University of Utah women's track and field team completed the first day of the Mountain State Games on Friday night at the Holt Arena. The throwers had a good night in the shot put and Haley McAllister-Birkeland had a lifetime best performance in the 60-meter dash.

Whitney Wellington placed third overall with 7.79 in the 60-meter dash preliminary round, followed by McAllister-Birkeland's lifetime best of 7.79 to earn ninth-place. The 60-meter dash finals will be ran on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. MT. In the 60-meter hurdles, Chelsey Kaplar earned seventh-place with a finish of 9.22 in the preliminaries. The finals will be on Saturday at 1:30 p.m.

The pole vault finals were competed on Friday with two Utah athletes in the top ten. Newcomer Klaudia Rokossa had a third-place finish with a vault of 12'6". Laryssa Simpson had an 11'6.18" vault for 10th-place.

Chasity Toilolo and Sarah Grimm had good showings in the shot put finals on Friday night earning fourth (42'9.77") and ninth (39'6.4"), respectively.

Brianna LeRoy's best events in the pentathlon were the hurdles, high jump, and long jump. She finished the hurdles in 9.07 (895 points) and had a jump of 5'4.96" (795 points) in the high jump for second-place in both events. In the long jump, LeRoy earned seventh-place with a jump of 16'10.36" (598 points).

"Today was kind of a mixed day. We saw a lot of good things, and several things that we need to work on," said head coach Kyle Kepler. "Chelsey [Kaplar] ran her usual time, so we'll look for her to hopefully break out of the 9.20 range tomorrow in the finals. Brianna [LeRoy] ran her first pentathlon and did well in some events, but the other three will need to be put together. No doubt that she'll do better next time. The throwers did well and I expect them to do well again tomorrow in the weight throw. We got the competition off to a good start today and got after it. I think we set ourselves up for a good day tomorrow."