Rusnak Leads Pac-12 Heptathlon After Day One

Saturday, May 4

Tucson, AZ

All Day

University of Washington

Pac-12 Multi-Events Championships

May 04, 2019 | Track & Field

By: UW Athletic Communications

Pac-12 Multi-Events
Saturday-Sunday, May 4-5
Tucson, Ariz.

Live Results | Event Schedule | Meet Central

TUCSON, Ariz. – All three Huskies are on personal-best pace after the first day of competition at the Pac-12 Multi-Event Championships tonight at Roy P. Drachman Stadium. Sophomore Hannah Rusnak holds a slim lead in the women's heptathlon competition while Elinor Jones Toutant posted a day one personal-best score and in the decathlon sophomore Parker Kennedy sits in fifth-place as he notched three PRs today.

Held one week prior to the rest of the conference Track & Field Championships, the multi-events went through four of the seven women's events today and five of the ten men's events. Champions will be crowned on Sunday and the team points the athletes score will roll over to the following week.

The competition will resume tomorrow at 4 p.m. with the men's 110m hurdles, with the women's long jump kicking off the final three women's events at 5:30 p.m.

Hannah Rusnak took the phrase "off to a fast start" and ran with it. ???????

The @UWTrack sophomore ran 13.68 for a PR in the 100m hurdles, and after four events in day 1, she is the leader in the #Pac12TF multi-events championships. pic.twitter.com/67Wg1rFYf2
— Pac-12 Network (@Pac12Network) May 5, 2019

Rusnak shattered the UW school record in the heptathlon in her last multi-event competition at the Bryan Clay Invite on Apr. 17-18. She finished today just slightly ahead of that pace, scoring 3,422 points compared to 3,398 points last time out.

Rusnak opened with a victory in the 100-meter hurdles and a new lifetime-best time of 13.68 seconds, also moving her up another spot on the Husky top-10 list to No. 5 in that event. She then high jumped 5-5, the second-best clearance of her career. Rusnak was second overall in the shot put at 39-7 3/4 and then was second again in the 200-meters, just .01 out of first, with a PR time of 24.46 seconds.

Colorado's Maja Wichhart-Donzo is 41 points behind Rusnak in second and UCLA's Christina Chenault is third, 110 points behind the Husky sophomore.

Jones Toutant, competing in her first Pac-12 heptathlon and the second heptathlon of her career, opened with a 100m hurdles PR of 14.84 seconds. She then cleared 5-1 1/4 in the high jump and threw 31-3 1/4 in the shot put. Jones Toutant clocked a 200-meter PR of 27.03 to conclude her day in 14th-place with 2,760 points.

Kennedy scored a career-best 3,472 points over his first five events. He opened with a 100-meter dash time of 11.25 seconds, then had a long jump PR of 21-10. His shot put mark of 34-5 3/4 was a bit off his season-best but he responded with a PR in the high jump of 5-8 1/2 and then ran a 400-meter PR of 49.44 to move up into fifth-place.