Anderson in position to defend Texas Relays 400h title...

Washington State's Jeshua Anderson (left/file photo by Paul Merca), the two-time defending Texas Relays intermediate hurdles champion, advanced from the Thursday prelims at the 83rd Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays, at Mike A. Myers Stadium on the University of Texas Austin campus.

Anderson, a junior from Woodland Hills, Calif., ran the fastest time among the 57 competitors in the men's 400m hurdles preliminary heats of 50.85 seconds. He is also the two-time Pacific-10 Conference and NCAA intermediate hurdles champion.

Last year at the Texas Relays, Anderson ran a winning time of 49.48.

Anderson, who owns the WSU school record time of 48.47 (2009), will run against eight other qualifiers in the Saturday afternoon final, including Southern California freshman Reggie Wyatt who broke Anderson's national prep 300m hurdles record last year.

Veronica Elseroad-Wall, a junior from Casper, Wyoming, ran a season-best time of 1:02.09 in the women's 400m hurdles which was 10th-best out of the 52 women racing in the preliminary heats, with only the top nine advancing to the final. Elseroad-Wall missed the final by only 35/100s of a second. Angele Cooper from Texas had the fastest prelim time of 59:39.

Washington's top two men's hammer throwers got their 2010 seasons off to fine starts Thursday. Senior Zack Midles took seventh in a loaded field and sophomore Angus Taylor set a new lifetime-best in a 10th-place finish.

Midles, out of Olympia, tossed the hammer 208-feet and 1-inch on his fourth attempt, just three feet short of his PR of 211-6 which ranks fourth in Husky history.

Taylor, a Richmond, B.C. native, topped the 60-meter mark for the first time in his career, tossing 60.30m which converts to 197-feet, 10-inches. He hit that mark on his second throw, and only got three tries with the depth of the field. The new PR raised Taylor one spot on the Husky Top-10 list to ninth, as he passed Rich Bagley's best from 1979.

Both marks would have surpassed the old NCAA Regional marks, which have been tossed out this year. Midles and Taylor will need to be among the top-48 hammer throwers in the West Region at the end of May, when the NCAA preliminary rounds will be held back in Austin.

Three more Huskies will compete this weekend, all tossing the javelin. All-Americans Kyle Nielsen and Brooke Pighin will compete on Saturday, with freshman Joe Zimmerman also in action either Friday or Saturday.

Results from the Texas Relays can be accessed here.

NOTE--The sports information offices at the University of Washington and Washington State University contributed to this report.