Rusnak Smashes Heptathlon School Record

Thursday, April 18

Azusa, CA

All Day

University of Washington

Bryan Clay Invitational

April 18, 2019 | Track & Field

By: UW Athletic Communications

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AZUSA, Calif. – Sophomore Hannah Rusnak sprinted, jumped, and threw her way to the top of the Washington recordbook today at the Bryan Clay Invitational, as the Lynden, Wash. native crushed the UW school record in the heptathlon which had stood for the past twenty-seven years.

The rest of the Husky track and field squad is on its way to California to compete Friday and Saturday at Long Beach and Stanford, and Rusnak gave them a high bar to meet as she increased her heptathlon career-best by a whopping 708 points to finish with a score of 5,642 points today at Azusa Pacific's Cougar Stadium.

Breaking records wasn't part of the thought process going in for Rusnak, who said "I just took it one event at a time, one day at a time. After day one I had a really good idea that I was scoring pretty well, but I didn't go into the next day thinking I need to get a certain mark in certain events. I just went to each event saying 'I'm a long jumper, now I'm a javelin thrower.'

"Honestly coming into it I just wanted to do what I've been training all this season and I was mostly able to execute it, so to put what you've practiced into meets is a great feeling."

Rusnak's score shattered the former record of 5,266 points set in 1992 by Sonja Forster. It's a mark that would have qualified for the NCAA Outdoor Championships one year ago, and currently puts the sophomore into the top-10 in the NCAA this season at the No. 9 spot, adding in all the marks from Azusa that finished up today. All that in just her second full heptathlon, as Rusnak's first and only other heptathlon was last year at the Pac-12 Multi-Events, where she was 10th scoring 4,934 points.

Yesterday Rusnak was on pace for a major PR through the first four events, highlighted by an excellent 100m hurdles time of 13.80 seconds and a major career-best in the high jump, clearing 5-5 3/4.

Out of the seven events, Rusnak was most pleased with the high jump. "Definitely my high jump, that's been an event I've struggled with, so getting the outcome I did from that and knowing I can get even better, it was a great feeling."

Today she opened up with a strong mark in the long jump at 19-2 3/4, and then she set two more PRs from there to close things out. Rusnak threw the javelin 136-10, a nine-foot PR, and then came the 800-meters to close it out. A school record was all but certain, as she just needed to go under three minutes, but posting a score that could be in the mix for Nationals would require a much faster time.

"After javelin, Coach pulled me aside," says Rusnak, "and he said 'do you want the good news or the bad news?' He said the bad news is you are going to have to run a good (800-meters), and the time we were shooting for was 2:30. The good news he said was if I got that time we're in really good shape. That got me really excited and made the 800 a little more exciting. So my goal was to get 2:30 and I was able to get that by a few seconds."

Indeed, Rusnak crossed the line in 2:26.50, a four-second PR over her previous best time set indoors.

It is the third school record of the season for the Huskies, after Olivia Gruver's NCAA Outdoor record in the pole vault (15-6 1/4) and Izzi Batt-Doyle's 10,000-meter record of 32:20.84.

Likely it won't be long before Rusnak has company high up on the heptathlon records, as competing right alongside her over the past two days was recent addition Ida Eikeng, a transfer from Kentucky now in her first quarter at Washington who is redshirting and competing unattached. Eikeng finished with a score of 5,670 points, just a few points more than Rusnak. She won the javelin competition to highlight her day two with an outstanding mark of 150-6.

Rusnak says the addition of Eikeng as a training partner and someone to compete with these past two days has been huge.

"It's so amazing having such an amazing athlete that you're able to compete against and help to motivate each other," she says. "Having Ida there, she's such an amazing teammate, so we push each other along the way."

Also finishing up her first career heptathlon today was junior Elinor Jones Toutant. She set PRs in all three events on day two, long jumping 17-0 3/4, throwing the javelin 116-10, and running the 800-meters in 2:28.21 to post a final score of 4,593 points.

Sophomore Parker Kennedy completed his first collegiate decathlon. He started his day with a time of 16.24 seconds in the 110m hurdles, then threw 91-2 in the discus. Kennedy tied for the win in the pole vault with a clearance of 15-5, and he then threw 153-1 in the javelin. He wrapped it up with a 1,500-meter run of 4:43.26. That brought his two day total to 6,606 points, placing 11th overall in his grouping.