Nicole Gysin the Youngest at Women's Decathlon Championship

Last weekend, the inaugural women's Open Decathlon Championships took place at Nevada Union High School in Grass Valley, California. This was notable in many ways, but the main point was this: It aims to make the decathlon a more prominent competition in the world of women's track and field, where the heptathlon has been the feature multi-event.

You can read more about the significance of the meet in the FloTrack articles written by Johanna Gretschel linked below. 

• Full Results
• FloTrack: The Inaugural Women's Decathlon Championship is a Big Deal and Here's Why
  
• FloTrack: Morgan Griffiths Wins Inaugural Women's Open Decathlon Championship

The two day meet was won by Morgan Griffiths, a senior at the University of Kansas, with a score of 5,939 points.

But Nicole Gysin, an incoming junior at Immaculate Heart Academy, was the youngest competitor, traveling all the way from Waldwick, New Jersey. The young multi-event high school athlete finished 11th overall with a final score of 3,441 points. 

She ran 14.42 in the 100m, 1:14.66 in the 400m, 20.12 in the 100m hurdles, and 6:25.68 for the 1500m in the track portion. She completed the field events with a leap of 4.13m in the long jump, 1.42m in the high jump, a throw of 6.65m in the shot put, 19.76m in the discus, 18.29m in the javelin, and vaulted a height of 2.30m.

Her two highest scoring events coming in the 100m and high jump with 540 and 534 points respectively.  

Decathlon vs Heptathlon

There is quite a jump from the seven event heptathlon to the ten event decathlon. See the different disciplines compared next to each other below. The addition of the pole vault and 1500m particularly add technical and endurance based twists to the event list.