Arizona's Carlos Villareal leads seven runners under 4 minutes at Dempsey Saturday...
The invitational mile was set up to give many of the runners who ran in Friday night’s featured distance medley relay at the UW Last Chance College Elite Meet an opportunity to get an individual mark in the mile in advance of next week’s Mountain Pacific Sports Federation championship meet.
Pacesetter Drew Piazza of the Nike Oregon Track Club set the race up for the field, with Villareal always within striking distance, along with Washington’s Mick Stanovsek, coming off Friday night’s distance medley relay where he ran a 3:55 unofficial split for 1600 meters.
Piazza pulled off the track at the 1200 mark at around 2:59, and it was race on for the field.
First Charlie Hunter and James West of Oregon moved to the front, with Stanovsek and Villareal in tow, as they looked to run away from the pack.
However, Villareal charged back with less than 200 meters to go, before taking command for good coming off the final turn, taking the win in 3:57.27, which is the third fastest mark in NCAA Division I, pending the outcome of races around the country.
Hunter finished second in 3:57.74, with West 1/100th of a second behind.
Though he’s broken four minutes in the mile several times while at the University of Oregon, Stanovsek broke the four minute mile barrier for the first time as a Husky, running 3:58.64, making him the eighth man in Washington track and field history to break the barrier, and the second in the same season.
Stanovsek’s time is the fourth fastest in school history, though he has a personal best of 3:57.90, set last year as a member of the Oregon Ducks.
Blake Haney of Oregon was fifth in 3:58.73, with David Ribich of the Brooks Beasts sixth in 3:58.91, and Oregon’s Jackson Mestler ducking under 4 minutes in seventh at 3:59.77.
Results of the men’s invitational mile run at the UW High School Invitational are available here.
In Birmingham, England, Pullman’s Katie Nageotte ended her European tour with a second place finish Saturday at the Müller Indoor Grand Prix meet.
Nageotte cleared 15-9.25 (4.81m), the same height as winner Holly Bradshaw of Great Britain and third place finisher Nikoleta Kiriakopoulou of Greece.
At the eventual winning height, Bradshaw needed one attempt, while Nageotte and Kiriakopoulou each needed three tries to navigate over the bar.
Nageotte got second place over the Greek vaulter thanks to a first attempt make at the previous height, of 15-5.5 (4.71m).
The Müller Indoor Grand Prix was highlighted by a world record in the men’s 1500 meters by Samuel Tefera of Ethiopia, the reigning world indoor champ at this distance, as he kicked past countryman Yomif Kejelcha of the Nike Oregon Project to get the record in a time of 3:31.04, breaking the mark of Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj set in 1997.
For his part, Kejelcha, who openly announced that he was going for the world record in the 1500 after missing the world record in the mile by .01 at the Millrose Games in New York last week ended up with a personal best of 3:31.58.
Complete results of the Müller Indoor Grand Prix are available here.
In Port-of-Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, Puyallup prep standout David Elliott finished sixth in the NACAC Cross Country Championships Saturday.
Elliott ran 32:17 as the fifth runner across the line for Team USATF, as Abbabiya Simbassa took the victory, leading four Americans across the line in front of Canada’s Rory Linkletter, who attends Brigham Young University.
In the men’s team scoring, Team USATF took the top spot on the podium with a perfect 10 (top 3), while Canada was second at 31, followed by Trinidad & Tobago at 88.
In the women’s 10k, former Brooks Beast Jessica Tonn, who moved back to Arizona at the end of 2018, finished third in a time of 36:40, as Breanna Sieracki of the USA won in 36:34.
Tonn was the second runner across the line for the Americans, who won the women’s team title with 18 points over Canada, with Mexico third at 55.
Complete results of the NACAC Cross Country Championships are available here.
NOTE: The IAAF, NACAC, British Athletics, and the sports information office of the University of Washington contributed to this report.
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