COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Ednah Kurgat, a junior on the 10th-ranked University of New Mexico women’s track & field team, has been named Mountain West Women’s Indoor Track Athlete of the Week for meets contested from February 9-10.
Kurgat, hailing from Eldoret, Kenya, ran a personal-record time of 8 minutes, 57.47 seconds in the 3000-meter run at the Husky Classic in Seattle on Saturday to win the event that featured some of the best distance runners in the NCAA and 102 total runners.
Kurgat’s time, which set the New Mexico record in the 3000, ranks third in the NCAA this season and leads the Mountain West this season by over 2.5 seconds.
She ranks second in Mountain West history behind Allie Ostrander, whom Kurgat beat on Saturday. Ostrander’s conference record is 8:54.27, set at the 2016 Husky Classic.
Kurgat’s mark also stands as the 13th-best all-conditions indoor 3000-meter time in NCAA history, which counts oversized track times. The USTFCCCA’s official ranks do not count times recorded on oversized tracks, which includes Dempsey Indoor, the facility in which she ran.
Additionally, Kurgat now owns three performances (along with a MW-record time of 15:19.03 in the 5000 and a time of 4:35.29 in the mile) that rank top-10 in the NCAA in 2018. Only two other female athletes in Division I have three top-10 performances in different individual events (Missouri’s Karissa Schweizer and Arkansas’ Taliyah Brooks).
Overall, Kurgat is New Mexico’s first MW Women’s Athlete of the Week this season and the team’s first since Calli Thackery claimed the honor on February 21, 2017.
However, Kurgat’s honor marks the third for UNM over the last three weeks as she joins Men’s Track Athlete of the Week Carlos Salcido (January 30) and Josh Kerr (February 6).
New Mexico is off this week as the team prepares to host the Mountain West Indoor Championships February 22-24 at the Albuquerque Convention Center.
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