Hutchinson dominates the track

At the Snake River Open, held on Jan. 14 and Jan. 15, senior Bradi Hutchison won the women's 3000-meter with a time of 9:40.32, a school record that also qualified her for the Big Sky Indoor Championships.

On Friday, Jan. 20, at the Montana State Duel Meet, Hutchison led the Idaho State women's track team in the women's mile and women's 3000-meter. She finished with a time 4:52.66 in the mile, which is second on the all-time performances. Her 3000-meter time of 9:57.82 is sixth on the all-time performances. 

Hutchison has admitted to preferring running track to cross-country. "Track is more based off of what you do; it's always the same. It's always the same race, so you can build on your personal best easier than in cross-country," said Hutchinson.

While Hutchison is leading the team to success, she is still motivated by individual success on the track. "Of course the records are cool and nice to aim for, but it's still a team sport, so I want to go out there and beat the other teams in the conference," said Hutchison.  "But at the same time, my main goal is to focus on doing the best I can in the country, and to get there, you have to try and break the records."

Although Hutchinson is a strong, competitive athlete, she emphasized that she is a student first and an athlete second. She is a Microbiology major and wants to be a physician assistant. 

A career as a professional runner will have to happen naturally, and as of now, Hutchison's main priority is school.

While this is the last indoor track season for Hutchison, she can still use her redshirt to return for the outdoor season next year and train more in hopes of achieving a runner's ultimate goal in qualifying for the Olympics.

As far as her athletic goals, the Olympics are always the ultimate goal for any runner, but Hutchison doesn't get ahead of herself. She understands better than most about how hard and time consuming it can be to compete on that level and knows that she needs to take it one step at a time. 

"It's easier to just focus on winning at conference and then focus on winning the NCAA because you can't get to the Olympics trials if you don't win those. I just take it step by step."

"The Olympics are always a goal for people.  Just going to the Olympic trials would be really cool," said Hutchison. "I have one more season to train and we will see what happens. If running is going really well for me, then I would be okay with taking a year off to train for something like the Olympics, but we will just have to see what happens."

If Hutchison continues her dominating performance on the track, then there may likely be some physician left without Hutchinson as an assistant while she represents our country at the Olympics.