TUCSON, AZ. – Nicole Choquette won her first 800m of the season and Chisom Nwoko ran the fifth fastest outdoor 400m in Illinois history to highlight the Jim Click Shootout for the Illinois women's track and field team. The Illini finished fifth in the team standings with 90 points.

Full Results

"It was a good experience for us because we ran into the heat and some good competition," said head coach Mike Turk. "It did affect us a little bit. It's a learning experience. We have to be resilient, and you can't be resilient if everything is always easy. I was pretty pleased with the way we responded for the most part. Overall, it was really good."

Following a personal record in the 1500m last week at Stanford to open the graduate student's outdoor season, Choquette won her 800-meter debut with a time of 2:09.63. The Big Ten bronze medalist indoors, Choquette won the race by almost two seconds over runner-up Katelin Warren (2:11.52) of Arizona.

"She ran confidently," head coach Mike Turk said of Choquette's victory. "Part of the story is that her confidence is starting to grow, and a big factor I notice as a head coach is that she's having fun. That's a big part of what you want to do – it's a lot of work and you want to compete – but it's good when you have some fun. I think she's enjoying having some teammates around that are competitive. You put that together with her ability and growing confidence, and it's a winning combination."

Choquette's teammate Rebecca Craddock placed fifth in the 800m with a time of 2:15.43 after placing runner-up in the 1500m, timing 4:26.32, earlier in the day. The freshman's 1500m time would have ranked in the top-10 of the Big Ten entering the weekend.

Also in the 1500m alongside Craddock, freshman Mikaela Lucki placed fifth with a personal record time of 4:33.00, a seven-second improvement on her debut in the event earlier in the season.

"Rebecca ran a really, really good [1500m] race and got beat by someone who is really good, and Mikaela Lucki has improved by leaps and bounds," Turk said of the two freshmen. "It's amazing how much she's improved since the fall when she had been hurt for two years, and Coach Haveman has done masterful job of bringing her along and coaching her. And then, Rebecca came back in the 800m and ran a really solid 800m 35 minutes after her 1500m race. A really gutsy performance for her, and she knew she was here to do some work, and she got after it and got it done."

Also moving up the conference list, as well as the Illinois all-time list, was sophomore Chisom Nwoko in the 400m. For the second straight week Nwoko dropped her personal-record time to 53.11, lowering it by .48 seconds in race that featured five sprinters finishing in less than 54 seconds.

Nwoko's time ranks sixth in the Big Ten entering the weekend and moves her up two spots, to sixth, on Illinois' all-time list, passing former Illini Tonja Buford-Bailey (53.17) and Melissa Bates (53.39).

"It wasn't her very best 400-meter race this year," said Coach Turk. "She got out really well. I was really pleased with the way she ran the first 200 meters. I think she managed that really well, it was fast but it wasn't too fast. The third hundred [meters] I think she fell asleep a little bit in that race. She was very responsive when she came off the last turn, down the home stretch, the light bulb came on and she realized she hadn't ran the turn quite as hard as she should of. She competed, put the peddle to the metal, and whatever she had she let it rip. She keeps dropping times and ran really well on the 4x400m relay as well. She's still a little inexperienced, but that was a heck of a 400 [meter] field she ran in today; she beat some really good people."

Adding to the success from the middle distance and 400m sprints were season-best performances in five other track events.

In the 400-meter relay, the Orange and Blue lowered its time in the event for the third straight week with a time of 45.25 from Emone' Davis, Janile Rogers, Briana Driver and Sade Hargrove.

Driver and Rogers carried the momentum from their relay legs into the open 100m and 200m where both set season-best times. Driver timed 11.81, which ranks eighth in the conference entering the weekend and stands just seven hundredths off her personal record of 11.74, while Rogers finished the 200m race in 24.66.

Freshmen Maya Seay and Alexis Jones added in personal bests in both the high hurdles and intermediate hurdles. Seay set a lifetime best finish of 13.88 in the 110m hurdles, while Alexis Jones set season-best finishes of 14.03 in the 110m hurdles and 1:01.46 in the 400m hurdles.

Illinois' top performances in field events came from Driver and fellow junior Sara McKeeman. Driver tied her season best jump of 19'3.25" (5.87m), while McKeeman took third in the pole vault with a height of 12'1.5" (3.70m).

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Event Champions:

800m: Nicole Choquette, 2:09.63