Island School graduate Pierce Murphy finished fourth in the 5,000 meter run of the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships on Sunday at Drake Stadium at UCLA. The junior at the University of Colorado finished in 13 minutes, 48.43 seconds to
Island School graduate Pierce Murphy finished fourth in the 5,000 meter run of the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships on Sunday at Drake Stadium at UCLA.
The junior at the University of Colorado finished in 13 minutes, 48.43 seconds to earn five points for the Buffaloes.
“Pierce was in there fresh and he did really well,” said CU coach Mark Wetmore in a press release. “It capped off a very good weekend.”
The Buffalo men finished seventh with 68 points in the team competition for the two-day event, with the University of Oregon taking first with 185 points.
Next up for Murphy are the NCAA West Regionals on May 28-30) in Austin, Texas, and the NCAA Outdoor Championships (June 10-13) in Eugene, Oregon.
It’s been a solid junior year for the son of Shawn and Doreen Murphy of Kilauea, who graduated from Island School in 2011.
Outdoors on the track, he has logged a sixth-place 5k finish (13:37.05) earlier this month at the Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford, and prior to that a 12th-place 1,500-meter run (3:44.31) in mid-April at the Bryan Clay Invitational at Azusa Pacific, according to a CU press release.
Indoors, at the Husky Classic in Seattle in February, his 5k time of 13:39.29 was the third overall fastest at CU and won the event. A month later, he was a first-time qualifier for the 2015 NCAA Indoor Championships; he placed sixth in the 5k (13:54.56).
He added All-American indoor recognition to go with a pair of the same honors in cross country.
