Eastern grad Jailya Ash, a sophomore at UConn, won her first Big East hurdles title Saturday, outracing the field in the 60-meter hurdles final in Chicago.
Ash ran 8.35, finishing a step ahead of Villanova’s Jane Livingston, who was 2nd in 8.40. She was only 4-100ths of a second off her lifetime-best of 8.31, which she ran at a meet in December in Boston.
Livingston led all qualifiers with an 8.40 in Friday’s trials, with Ash just behind in 8.42. They lined up next to each other in the final, with Livingston in Lane 4 and Ash to her right in Lane 5, and it was a two-person race, with nobody else under 8.50.
The win was particularly sweet for Ash coming a year after she failed to finish the race in the hurdles prelims in last year’s Big East meet and then finishing 11-100ths of a second behind Livingston last spring in the Big East outdoor meet in Storrs with her PR 13.58.
UConn hasn’t bothered updating the women’s track and field records section on its web site since 2015, but Ash races 2nd in school history with her 8.31 behind only Phylicia George, who ran 8.24 in the prelims of the 2010 NCAA Championships at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 