Millville’s Bryanna Craig came within 18 points of winning her first Big 10 title Saturday but finished a strong 2nd with 3,992 points at SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
Craig, a sophomore at Purdue, placed 2nd behind Penn State senior Chloe Royce, who won with 4,010 points. She was in 5th going into the 800, the final event, but ran 2:15.97 for 879 points and passed three women to move into 2nd and nearly catch Royce.
Craig was also 2nd last winter, finishing 63 points behind Indiana senior Hope Purcell with her PR 4,046 points. She was also 2nd last spring with a personal-best 5,640 points in the heptathlon behind Winslow Township’s Tionna Tobias of Iowa.
On Saturday, Craig ran 8.71 for 971 points in the hurdles, high jumped 5-5 ¾ for 818 points, threw the shot a lifetime-best 37-11 ½ for 633 points and long jumped 17-11 ½ for 691 points before the closing 800.
Her hurdles time was 1-100th of a second off her PR of 8.70, set last winter in a meet in Chicago. It was her fastest hurdles time ever in a multi. Her other PRs are 5-8 ¾, 18-7 ¼ and 2:12.34.
Craig is only 135 points from the Purdue school record of 4,181 points set by Corissa Yasen in 1996. Her 4,046-point PR is Purdue’s highest in 26 years. Outdoors, her 5,640-point score is 4th-highest in Purdue history and highest in 28 years.
On the latest World Athletics site, Craig is listed as 40th among U.S. women with 3,792 points from a meet in January in Louisville. For some reason, World Athletics doesn’t update its database as often (or as accurately) as it used to, but her 3,992 should be somewhere among the top 25 U.S. women.
She’s ranked 33rd in NCAA Division 1.
Tobias led the pentathlon through four events before disaster struck in the 800 and she was unable to finish.
But she had some strong early marks, including a PR 36-2 ¾ in the shot put, a 19-9 long jump and an 8.20 hurdles time – her fastest ever in a multi.
Incredibly, the NCAA web site explaining “how the championship field is selected,” never actually says how the championship field is selected. How many athletes qualify in each event? That doesn’t seem to be written anywhere, but I’ll keep looking. But typical track and field where the people in charge just make it as hard as possible to follow the sport.
In any case, Tobias ranks among the top 30 in the pentathlon [24th], hurdles [27th] and long jump [15th at 20-0 ½]. Craig is 33rd in the pentathlon.
From the Backstretch by Reuben Frank 