The Arizona men’s and women’s track and field teams competed in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championship Meet in Seattle this weekend.
According to head coach Fred Harvey, he had one goal for his team in the meet.
“We want to see how well everyone scores when competing in their primary event,” Harvey said in a press release. “The way training is going, we just want everyone to have a personal best in their area or at least a season best.”
This goal was hit for the Wildcats, as multiple personal records were set.
Pau Tonnesen set one of these personal bests in the pole vault event — one of the highlights for the Wildcats on the first day of competition.
Tonnesen’s mark of 18 feet, 1.75 inches earned him a first-place finish and the fourth-best jump in the nation. Tonnesen also competed in the men’s 60-meter hurdle, placing in seventh with a time of 8.22 seconds, his fourth-best career time.
Harvey had high praise for Tonnesen.
“Pau is such a competitor,” Harvey said. “I was speaking to some of the reporters out there on the track and one of the things that stuck out was that he had three PRs leading up to that. Last year at the NCAA Championships, an athlete had eight out of 10 PRs to almost win the national title. That’s the type of competitor that Pau is. He gets your team fired up, he is always up for the challenge in front of him.”
Also highlighting the weekend for the Wildcats was the women’s 4×400 relay team, which placed in first and easily beat their own UA school record for the event by nearly a second.
The team ran a time of 3:32.54 which was better than the previous school record of 3:33.29 that the same team had set at the Don Kirby Invitational.
The record setting team consists of Tatum Waggoner, Nnenya Hailey, Gia Trevisan and Sage Watson.
Afterwards, Tatum Waggoner demonstrated her pride for her and her teammates.
”I am proud of what we did, just going out there and killing it,” Waggoner said in a press release. “We were all a little worried from the beginning, and I am kind of injured in a sense, but we had to go out there and get it done and that is what we did. Now we have to get ready for nationals.”
Other notable performances came from Collins Kibet, Lisanne Hagens, Aaron Castle, Claire Green and Sam Willis.
Kibet earned a second place finish with a new personal record time of 1:48.04 in the men’s 800-meter race.
Hagens competed in the women’s high jump and placed second overall with a mark of 5 feet, 10.5 inches.
Castle finished in seventh in the men’s shot put event with a throw of 60 feet, 3.75 inches. Green competed in the women’s mile run, earning herself a seventh-place finish with a new personal best time of 4:44.22.
Willis set a new personal best in the men’s mile run en route to a 10th place finish with a mark of 4:07.99.
Arizona’s next meet will be in Birmingham, Alabama, as the team will be competing in the NCAA Indoor Championships. This meet will begin on Friday, March 11.
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