Whitehurst "pretty happy" with hurdles performance

 

Many of you know sophomore David Whitehurst as a starting guard on the Penn basketball team, but once the spring season starts he's arguably Penn's best hurdler. In fact, Penn was the only school he applied to that would let him do both sports.

Whitehurst was out on the Franklin Field track today, competing in the shuttle hurdles and the 110m hurdles. In the latter, he fourth in his heat with a time of 14.26 seconds, his best time this season by three-tenths of a second. Whitehurst said he was "not satisfied, [but] okay with" his performance, which was 13th-best overall.

Of course, in his two other races this year, he didn't face the level of competition he did today. ACC champion Dominic Berger of Maryland was also in Whitehurst's heat, and only came in second.

As for the shuttle hurdles, if you've never seen it before (and I confess to having not before today), it's quite interesting. It's a kind of hurdles relay, but without a baton. Each team gets two lanes, with two people at each end of the track. The first runner runs from the east to the west end of the track, and once he (or she, in the women's races) gets a certain length down the track, the second runner takes off the other way in the next lane over. The third runner goes in the same lane as the first, and the last runner goes in the same lane as the second.

It's not all that confusing in person -- that is, until people start crashing into hurdles. Which is exactly what happens in Penn's heat. The Quakers as well as Penn State and Clemson all had runners fall at some point, which led to a nearly 10-second gap between heat winners Tennessee (55.87 seconds) and the last-place Tigers (1:05.18, and subsequently disqualified). Penn finished fourth in the heat with a time of 1:03.40. Because of Clemson's disqualification, that put the Quakers in last place.

For his part, Whitehurst was too focused on running his leg to pay attention to all the commotion.

"I have no clue what happened," he said. "I was getting my block set and I heard a whole lot of oohs and aahs"

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