Track and field jumps into outdoor season with sweep at invitational
Redshirt senior Kylie Price and the UCLA track and field team beat Arizona and Washington State at the Jim Bush Collegiate Invitational last week. (Daily Bruin file photo)
By Michael Hull
March 27, 2016 10:12 p.m.
It had been two years since redshirt senior Kylie Price competed in a collegiate outdoor meet.
At the 2014 NCAA Outdoor Championships, Price took third place in the long jump. Not many athletes decide to take a redshirt season after such success, but that’s exactly what the four-time first team All-American chose to do – and the results are paying off early in 2016.
Price took first place in the long jump and the 100 meter dash, and anchored the UCLA women’s 4×100 meter relay which broke the meet record at the Jim Bush Collegiate Invitational in Drake Stadium last Tuesday.
The women won with a commanding 28-point buffer over the second place Arizona Wildcats, while the men won with an equally convincingly margin of 23.5 points over Washington State.
Price’s 21-4.75 in the long jump matched her career best and tied the mark that gave her the fifth-longest women’s long jump in UCLA history nearly three years ago.
She also hadn’t broken 11.50 in the 100 meter dash since the Pac-12 championships, also in the 2013 season. On Tuesday, Price only finished seven-hundredths of a second behind her personal record of 11.36.
To round out her events, Price finished second behind freshman Angie Annelus in the 200 meter dash, and it wasn’t the only event in which the Bruin women were the top finishers.
Redshirt junior Torie Owers and redshirt freshman Stamatia Scarvelis took first and second in the shot put, sophomore Jessie Maduka was right behind Price in the 100 meter dash and redshirt freshman Ashlie Blake was third behind Scarvelis who took first place in the discus.
Scarvelis’ shot put and discus throws came after her first outdoor hammer throw flew 193 feet 11 inches to place seventh on the all-time list at UCLA. She then won the event with an even better 195-8 throw.
For the men’s throws team, redshirt senior Nicholas Scarvelis, sophomore Braheme Days and redshirt freshman Dotun Ogundeji returned to action after representing UCLA at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Only Days and Ogundeji threw shot put, taking first and second respectively, but all three swept the discus throw. The redshirt freshman beat out Scarvelis and Days by just under seven feet.
Junior Austin Hazel hit 25 feet in the long jump for the first time, adding more than six inches to his previous personal best he set at the MPSF indoor championships, making this his second consecutive meet where he furthered his personal record.
Finally reaching the 25-foot bar puts Hazel at 15th in the country, albeit at the very onset of the outdoor season.
While the preseason rankings have the men and women 39th and 76th, respectively, their showings against two West Coast foes at the invitational this past week show potential for improvement in their regional standings over the coming months.
After all, there’s still a long way to go.
Email Hull at [email protected] or tweet him @michaelchull.
