Five Distance Runners to Open Track Season at Sharon Colyer-Danville Opener

BOSTON, Mass. – The 2024-25 University of Kentucky Track & Field season is set to commence on Saturday, December 7 at the Sharon Colyer-Danville Season Opener in Boston, Mass. Hosted at the Boston University Track & Tennis Center, the event is one of the premier distance meets of the season and will welcome hundreds of runners from across the country.

Five Wildcats are set to take the track for the first time this season—Ed Bird, Collins Kiprop Kipngok, Jenna Schwinghamer, and Jackson Watts. All five competitors this weekend are coming off the heels of a successful Cross Country season that concluded in November.

Schwinghamer will have the honor of racing the first event of the season for Kentucky, contesting Section 1 of the Women’s Mile. A graduate student from Springboro, Ohio, Schwinghamer enters her final season with the Cats as a two-time All-American in the Distance Medley Relay and a school record holder in the indoor 1000m.

Kruger will be the next Wildcat to race, toeing the line in Section 3 of the Women’s 3000m. A junior from St. Louis, Mo., Kruger led the Women’s Cross Country team in scoring at all five meets in 2024 and was a Drake Relays champion in the 5000m last season.

Bird will be the first racer for the men’s team, competing in Section 2 of the Men’s 3000m. The Dorchester, England native has already built off his stellar freshman season—in which he set four Kentucky freshman records—with a successful Cross Country campaign in 2024. Bird won the Gans Creek Classic—his first collegiate win in the discipline—and earned All-SEC and USTFCCCA All-Region honors. Over the summer, Bird also won the bronze medal in the 3000m at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima, Peru.

The final race of the day will be the Men’s 5000m, featuring Collins Kiprop Kipngok and Jackson Watts. The Colyer-Danville Opener will be the first collegiate track and field meet for Kiprop Kipngok who has already turned in a stellar Cross Country campaign in his short stint as a Wildcat. The Nakuru, Kenya native qualified to the NCAA Championships—the first for a member of the Men’s team since 2016—in addition to earning USTFCCCA All-Region and SEC All-Freshman honors.

Watts, a senior from Slaughters, Ky., will begin his final track campaign as a Wildcat on Saturday night, looking to build off his breakout 2024 season. Watts earned his first-ever SEC medal at the 2024 Outdoor Championships—a bronze in the 3000m Steeplechase—in addition to a personal best place and finish in the 5000m at the SEC Indoor Championships.

Following the distance opener in Boston, the rest of the Kentucky Track & Field program will open their 2024-25 indoor season at the Louisville Opener on December 11. Held at the Norton Healthcare Sports & Learning Center in the Derby City, the meet will see the majority of the Wildcats start their campaigns against competition from Louisville and Texas.

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