Zachariah Murray is a tremendous story of persistence and determination. The kind of story all track and field fans love. Because of that, he was able to break a 4-year-old PR on Saturday.
Murray, a Haddonfield graduate and now a 5th-year grad student at Marquette, placed 2nd Saturday in the 400-meter dash at the Big East Championships in Chicago.
After barely reaching the final.
Murray ran 47.97 in the final, toppling his PR of 47.98 by 1-100th of a second. Murray ran 47.98 as a freshman in the 2020 indoor Big East Championships in Geneva, Ohio, and that stood as his 400 PR until this past weekend.
In the trials on Friday, Murray ran 48.84, the 7th-fastest qualifying time, and he only advanced by 24-100ths of a second. He wound up in Lane 3 for the two-race final but when the winning time in the first section was 48.46 and he was able to finish in front of everyone but UConn’s Anish Rajamanickam in the second section, he had a 2nd-place medal. Rajamanickam won the race in 47.91.
Murray came close to running sub-48 a bunch of times – he ran 48.14 and 48.12 at the 2022 Big East outdoors in Storrs, 48.24 last winter at the Big East meet in Chicago and then 48.30 at last year’s outdoor Big East at Villanova.
Before Murray ran 47.98, Marquette’s indoor school record was 48.30, run by Kyle Winter in a meet in South Bend, Ind., in March 2012. So he actually lowered his own school record this weekend.
(And great job by Marquette sports information updating the all-time list already!)
That 48.12 from 2022 Big East is Murray’s outdoor PR and No. 6 in school history. Because of COVID, there was no 2020 outdoor season, so 2021 was Murray’s freshman year of outdoor eligibility, which means he should be eligible for outdoors this year if he decides to compete. If he does, he’ll be chasing the outdoor school record of 47.13 set by John Rydeski at the 1981 Central Collegiate Championships in East Lansing, Mich.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 