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Show DAILY UTAH CHRONICLE 6 Wednesday, January 22, 2014 TRACK Freshmen shine at first meet Dominic Garcia STAFF WRITER ERIN BURNS/The Daily Utah Chronicle Rosalie Waller competes in the hurdles event during the Utah Spring Classic last season. After upperclassmen led the charge in the season opener at BYU two weekends ago, it was the newcomers' turn to shine at the Snake River Open in Pocatello, Idaho. Freshman Alissa Atisme had two second-place finishes, and fellow classmates Christine Van Brocklin and Courtney Jost each had a third place result. The rest of the Utes struggled to place in the top three in each of their respective events. The Snake River Open featured four of the same schools that were at the event in Provo. "I thought our young kids did well," said Utah head coach Kyle Kepler. "A lot of times with the young kids, you worry about consistency." Atisme's top finishes came in the 6o- and 200-meter races. She didn't get the best start in the preliminary heat of the 60-meter but had a strong finish to qualify for the finals. In that race, she got off to a much better start and finished with a time of 7.88. "I felt like I got a better push off the blocks," she said. "It still wasn't good, but I was able to get a [personal record] and took second." The 200-meter race also came with some difficulty for Atisme. The track the teams were running on was a 200-meter wooden track with banked turns. Atisme started the trial race slow because she is used to running on a full-size track. After adjusting to it, she qualified for the finals, where she took second. "The next 200— track I run on, it will be better, because now I have a feel for it," Atisme said. Van Brocklin ran in the 6o-meter hurdles, and after making it to finals was able to snag a third place finish with a time of 9.10. Jost took her third place in the long jump with a distance of 16 feet and it inches. Giving younger athletes an opportunity to shine at early-season events happened by design. Kepler brings newcomers to events early in their career that don't feature top level competition in order to give them confidence for when they compete against better competition. "You can start to kind of see them, for lack of a better term, with that little moxie or swagger," Kepler said. "I don't think they are going to go Richard Sherman on anybody, though." Besides Atisme and Van Brocklin, two other Utes had particularly notable outings. Suzie Vozarova took ninth in the 60-meter hurdles, 12th in the long jump and eighth in shot put. Jameela Hayes finished fifth in the 6o-meter dash and eighth in the 200 meters. Utah will compete next at the Cherry and Silver Invitational in Albuquerque, N.M. on Friday. This event will bring a much higher level of competition for the Utes, with over 4000 athletes attending. New Mexico will also host the national championships this year. WOMEN'S TENNIS Utes start out the season hopeful Kersten Merry STAFF WRITER Coming off a month of no match play, the Utah women's tennis team competed in the Virginia Winter Invitational last weekend. The Utes six doubles matches and seven singles matches over the threeday event. The invitational was an exhibition of sorts, as the results won't count toward Utah's win-loss record, but Utes' head coach Mat Iandolo said it was an important weekend nonetheless. "This past weekend we got a really good feel for where everybody is competitively," Iandolo said. "We all needed the matches this past weekend, and we did a good job competing. Overall, basically what it was, was really hard and challenging matches to start our regular season." On the first day of play, Utah took on VCU and Marshall. The Utes took four doubles matches and three out of the six singles matches. On Sunday, they faced No. 13 Virginia and took victory in two of the six singles matches and none of the dou- bles matches. On the final day of play against Tennessee, Utah captured two doubles matches and two singles matches. Utah senior Sarah Pham beat Virginia's No. 28 Danielle Collins on the second day of play for a nail-biting upset. Pham later paired with fellow senior Callie Craig to defeat Tiffany Tavarez and Victoria Olivarez in doubles play. After the good weekend, Iandolo is confident his team can be successful this spring as long as players stay healthy. "One strength we have is our seniors. Our one weakness is, beyond our top six, we don't have a lot of depth," he said. "We have two scholarship players out for the year. We have six really good players, but we have to stay healthy. We will be very successful if they stay healthy." Regular season play starts this Friday in Los Angeles at the ITA Kickoff Weekend event. "I'm excited, I'm nervous, I'm everything," Iandolo said. "We have learned a lot up to this point, but we are going to learn a lot this weekend." k.merry@chronicle.utah.edu d.garcia@chronicle.utah.edu tweetlemaniactww-°t tw oW speak twitter heard on t maltwe er RT -t r er we E tW he e- s. ; a. spea t Itw Fi tweed ■ need mo T • • WI I o the tW et twee twee tweet a it • _ lOt WidlOt 4 11 -0,** it rmaltweeted speak twitter speak twitter rderspeak twitter ittertweet tweet m a i a c twVisEitat need more tweets - nothertw ck-r p t eet RT , twittertweetaolt 1-p(Ivetlicaigr t r n 110 1 idiot • speak twitter . .. . t'v • A s e •-i m ,..,. W X Mt need more tweets? tweetvva The Daily Utah Chronicle File Photo Sarah Pham returns a serve at the Eccles Tennis Center last season. Even hamstas‘writelletters ed moree tweets? ttwidiot col twidiot ppttwidiot %-%- ‘twidiot I ker ma ltweeted tweetlemaniactofer twittertweet , ,, agitru little tweet a. little 1 la rderspeak twitter |