McKayla Cole 3rd at USATF Junior Championships
Charles City graduate McKayla Cole, shown here on way to placing second at the 2016 Girls Cross Country State Championships, placed third in the Women’s 5,000-meter run at the USATF Junior Championship while representing the University of Northern Iowa.
Former Comet records personal-best 5K time
Staff Report
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Charles City graduate McKayla Cole placed third in the Women’s 5,000-meter run at the USA Track and Field Junior Championships on Friday.
Coming into the race, Cole was seeded 12th. Her time of 17 minutes, 23.5 seconds was an 8-second improvement from her previous personal-best 5K time.
At the Junior Championships, Cole represented Northern Iowa, where she just finished her red-shirt track season with the Panthers.
This past fall while running for Charles City, Cole placed second at the Girls Cross Country State Championships — a best-ever finish for a Comet girl — while helping her team place third. For Cole, who was also a multiple state track medalist, that was her last race as a Comet as she graduated a semester early from high school and enrolled at UNI last winter.
Finishing ahead of Cole were Georgia’s Samantha Drop, who placed first with a time of 16:56.91; and Cole’s Panther teammate Hannah Truninger, who was runner-up (17:5.37).
By way of finishing in the top two, Drop and Truninger will represent the United States at the Pan American Junior Championships, July 21-23 in Lima, Peru.
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