The Trailblazers are headed to UC Irvine this weekend to compete at the historic Steve Scott Invitational. Named for UC Irvine's Olympic runner, the meet has been contested since 1995 and has carried Adidas as its title sponsor since 2012. It will be the second time the Trailblazers run in Irvine this season. The Blazers also ran at UC Irvine in the Vince O'Boyle Classic back on April 1st.

This will be the final regular season meet of the year before Utah Tech heads to the WAC championships. With athletes more locked in on their main events, most will be competing in just one or two events, less than at some of the season's earlier meets. With good weather projected for the weekend and strong fields expected across all events, the conditions should be good for a strong finish to the regular season!

Friday Night: The meet kicks off Friday evening with the majority of the distance events. First up will be Sophomore Kinley Spaulding in the 3000-meter steeplechase. Fresh off a huge lifetime best of 12:32.27 run at altitude last weekend she will look to cut that time down even further at more ideal sea level conditions. This season, much like last week at BYU, the Steve Scott Invitational provides the unique opportunity of the outdoor mile. The Blazers have one entry in that event as well with Sophomore Lexi Larsen. She qualified for the invitational heats run Friday night based on her 4:42.37 1500 earlier this year. The final event of the evening will be the women's 5000-meter run with a group of five Trailblazers entered and headlined by junior Shakayla Morgan seeded based on her altitude converted 5000 from last week. The conversion brings her seed time down to just a shade over 18 minutes.

Saturday Competition: Saturday's competition will start with the Blazers three women group in the high jump as senior Morgan Callens, sophomore Kylie Bishop, and freshman Lainee Leavitt will all look to improve upon their outdoor season best of 1.50m (4' 11"). The first running event Saturday will be the 4x100 relay, the only relay team Utah Tech has entered. Freshman Alaynah Reed, sophomore Rashawnna Gibson, freshman Mary Fallon, and sophomore Ashlynn Gilhula will be the team looking for one more good run-through before the WAC championships. 

Opening the individual running events for the day will be an exciting group of five athletes in the 800-meter run. Sophomore Addi Wyatt, the team record holder over the distance at 2:13.14, and sophomore Lexi Larsen, the team's second-leading athlete at 2:16.00 are entered together in the 800 for the first time this season. The next event will be the 100-meter hurdles with freshman Ashlyn Parish and Megan Jenkins tackling the barries. 

The open 400 will also feature a pair of Blazers with Freshman Kelly Denninghoff holding the faster seed time at 59.78 and freshman Alaynah Reed close behind at 1:00.11 looking to dip under the one-minute barrier. In the quickest event in track, the 100-meter dash, Rashawnna Gibson comes in with the team lead and record of 12.16 to lead the field of four Trailblazers. And in the 400-meter hurdles, Freshman Megan Jenkins will try to run down her own team record of 1:02.75 followed by the Trailblazers three other entries. 

Then the final event of the day for Utah Tech will be the one-turn 200-meter dash. Tied with the 800 entries, it has the Trailblazers biggest contingent with five athletes running the race. Rashawnna Gibson comes in with the fastest time in this event as well, running 25.51 this year. She does also have one faster mark of 25.22, but it was run in non-legal wind conditions last week.

Up Next: The Trailblazers will get in another week of training then fly down to Nacogdoches Texas May 11th-May 13th for the 2023 WAC outdoor track and field Championships.