Women's 4x800-Meter Relay Sets School Record at Texas Relays
McPherson, Wahlin, Grube, Magloire finish second behind top-ranked Texas
AUSTIN, Texas. ?€“ The Mississippi State University women's 4x800-meterrelay team of junior Jen McPherson (Nampa, Idaho), sophomore AndreaWahlin (Cold Spring, Minn.), junior Liz Grube (Sherwood, Wis.) andsenior Zita Magloire (Tallahassee, Fla.) ran a school-record 8 minutes,47.84 seconds to finish second behind top-ranked Texas (8:45.68) onThursday at the 79th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays.
Zita almost ran Texas down, said MSU head coach Al Schmidt. It was agreat race. They broke their own school record. The wind was about 30miles per hour down the backstretch, and we were right there. Our goalis to win Saturday's distance medley relay. We'll have some big eventstomorrow with the men's sprint group.
State bested Southeastern Conference rival LSU by more than eightseconds. The Tigers (8:55.23) were third with Abilene Christian(8:58.63) and Kansas (9:03.20) rounding out the top five.
In the men's 4x800-meter relay, junior Nathan Daniels (New Iberia, La),junior Ryan Irwin (Ballwin, Mo.), junior Phillip Moore (Hoover, Ala.)and sophomore Isaiah Marshall (Detroit, Mich.) clocked the second-besttime on the squad this season, running 7:53.52.
Senior Lauren Johnson (Scottsboro, Ala.) completed her first heptathlonof the season, tallying 4,906 points. Johnson set personal records inthe high jump (5-03), 200-meter dash (25.66) and javelin throw (98-00).
In the women's hammer throw, freshman Emily Sanders (Woodstock, Ga.)finished with a throw of 170-03, while junior Mina Thorstenson(Okauchee, Wis.) ran 18:26.01 in the women's 5000-meter run. SeniorGedamu Ege (Atlanta, Ga.) competed in the men's 5000-meter run with atime of 15:26.56.
Action resumes Friday morning at Mike A. Myers Stadium beginning at9:30 a.m.