In Jenna Hutchins’ first two seasons at BYU, the former Science Hill national record-holding distance runner endured a roller coaster journey with limited competition and adjustments to collegiate-style racing.
Now, Hutchins, like in her prep days, is once-again a mainstay on the national stage, a surprise to no one who knows of her drive and work ethic.
The sophom*ore will be toeing the line next Thursday at historic and magical Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon for the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field championship final of the 10,000-meter run and running for a shot at not only her second All-American honors, but a national title as well.
“I’m so excited because I’ve never been to the track,” Hutchins said. “There’s so much cool history there and I know everyone does talk about the ‘Hayward magic.’ I just want to enjoy it and make the most of the opportunity and do the best that I can.”
At last weekend’s NCAA West Regional in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Hutchins finished fourth in a loaded field, crossing the line in 34:10.30, punching her ticket to the big dance on June 6.
Like a cougar stalking its prey, Hutchins bided her time through the first half of the 25-lap journey around the oval and pounced when feeling the timing was right. Her final lap was 72.5 — the fastest in the field — and included five passes of other runners.
“We were a little worried about the heat because the original starting time was 6:10 p.m. and for a race that long, the heat can be brutal,” noted Hutchins. “They ended up moving it back to 8:10. We were happy about that. … Once the race started, it was pretty slow and a lot of it was trying to navigate through the pack and stay patient. I wanted to save a lot for the end since it was such a long race.
”Not too far along in the race, I tripped up and fell around two or three miles in, but the pace was so slow and I was wearing spikes that I got right back up and caught up.”
Until the regionals, Hutchins had been ranked inside the top 10 for most of the season in the 10K thanks to an outstanding runner-up finish (32:52.01) at the Bryan Clay Invitational at Azusa Pacific University in California.
The winner of that race? Well, that was NCAA cross country national champion Parker Valby of Florida, who ran a collegiate record of 30:50.43 that day and added to her ever-growing list of historic performances.
“Honestly, we knew that (Valby) would go off and do her own thing, so we didn’t focus on her at all,” Hutchins said. “ I just wanted to have a good first 10K experience and I didn’t know what that would look like.
“There was a second pack and a pacer for the rest of the group. Nobody went with her, so I gave it a shot and went with the pacer. It was nice to have someone to sit behind and just not even have to think. … I still hadn’t had much time to adjust to the training and I knew the last five laps were going to be hard and the last three were really hard.”
Hutchins’ first experience in the 6.2-mile race went pretty well after months of planning but little time training after going straight from indoor 5K to the outdoor 10K.
“We had never really made a plan for what I was going to do outdoors, so in the middle of indoor season, I brought it up to (BYU coach Diljeet) Taylor and she thought about it for a little while,” explained Hutchins. “We made the necessary plans to be the most successful and I’m so glad that I decided to do it. I love the workouts for it and I love the adjustments that we’ve made and I I think the race is very well-suited for me.”
The end of the indoor season couldn’t have gone much better for Hutchins, who finished ninth at the NCAA Indoor Championships (15:31.42) and came agonizingly close to first-team All-American honors.
The Division I indoor championships are considered by most experts to be the toughest in which to qualify as only the top 16 by time or mark make the field. And with every event becoming more and more competitive with each passing year, even someone as fast as Hutchins had to sweat it towards the end of the season.
“It’s very hard (to make the field) because it’s everyone in the entire country,” she said. “I felt like every single weekend, there was another meet where people were running faster and faster. It’s hard to place yourself in the field sometimes when all that is happening.
“You’re always checking results to see how everyone else did and trying to better your time. This year was crazy fast and when we ran what we did in Boston, we were excited because we knew that it would probably get us in. But, as we got towards the end of the season, the times that we ran were like 13th, 14th and 15th.”
The high finish at the indoor championships and qualifying for the outdoor nationals brings a little bit more justification to the training at BYU and is a redeeming factor after a sub-par performance at the cross country national championships in Charlottesville, Virginia last fall.
The Cougars — picked by some to be a dark horse to challenge the likes of Northern Arizona and eventual national champion NC State — finished a disappointing 14th as a team. Hutchins finished 176th after starting out in the top 40 for the first half of the 6K race.
“That was something we were focused on going from cross country to indoors and there were some things we needed to do differently,” Hutchins said. “We had a good team going in and we were all devastated about what happened. I feel like it was a good chance for us to make adjustments and make the necessary changes going into indoor.”
Though Hutchins has always fancied the 5K on the track, she knew in the back of her mind that the 10K would be where she could make her hay. That also meant learning and practicing finishing hard, which is the way most collegiate championship races go.
“Honestly, in high school, I feel like there were some people that told me that the 10K would end up being my best event in college,” continued Hutchins. “I wasn’t opposed to that at all. I like the long stuff and I love the endurance races. I knew I would want to try it one day, but the 5K was always the one that I had the biggest passion for.
“I wanted to do the event that I had the best shot of placing the highest in and that was going to be the 10K. Really, the only major adjustment that I’ve had to make is a little more cross-training than I’ve done in the past. I haven’t had to increase mileage much.”
Hutchins didn’t specifically say the goal for this week’s race, but the experience of two consecutive seasons on the national stage should help immensely when stepping up to the waterfall line on an oval on which so many legendary figures have also stepped.
“If you make regionals and get to nationals, I feel like you’re more confident in terms of racing strategy and you can make adjustments from regionals to nationals,” Hutchins said. “I don’t know what nationals will look like, but I feel like if it is a faster 10K, I’m much more prepared to handle that and stay patient. I know with all the work that we’ve done that I’ll be able to finish hard and it’ll be good.”
