Team competition adds excitment to races

When organizers of this year's Deseret Morning News/KJZZ-TV races were planning the events, they thought of a twist — a city-team competition. Runners were invited to form four-person teams, claim the cities of their choice, then compete in head-to-head competition to determine Utah's fastest city or cities.

And the fastest in both men's and women's competition was Salt Lake.

Paced by individual champions Teren and Emily Jameson, the Salt Lake City team members in both men's and women's divisions earned first-place honors and prize money during Saturday's annual running of the 10K, held in conjunction with the Pioneer Day celebration.

Teren Jameson partnered with former collegiate teammate B.J. Christenson and veteran runner Dennis Simonaitis to win the men's team race in a combined time of 1:25.46. That was about 100 seconds faster than the Logan team of Mike Nielsen, Clark Bryner and Dave Danley.

"B.J. and I ran together (at the University of Utah), and we wanted to pair up with Dennis," Teren Jameson said. "We finalized the idea a couple of weeks ago."

They didn't work out together, but clearly were focused on earning a share of the $3,000 first prize, which they will now split three ways.

His wife, Emily, the former BYU all-American, made for perhaps the most unique team in the competition, at least in terms of collegiate affiliation. Emily partnered with former University of Utah runner Johanna Nielson, and with Susan Nielson, who has run for both BYU and Utah, to win the women's team event in a time of 1:39.55. They defeated the Draper team of Michelle Simonaitis, Rebecca Walters and Sarah Kramer, whose combined finishing times totaled 1:43.31.

"I think the team competition made this more fun this year," Johanna Nielson said. "It seemed more competitive, kind of like in college, and the camaraderie among the runners was really strong."

Susan Nielson, the former Skyline star, agreed: "This gave the race an extra dimension and really served as even more motivation. It was a nice element to add this year."

In the men's team division, Ogden (Mike Spence, Joseph Wilson and Trent Hooper) placed third, followed by Sandy and Woods Cross. The women's third-place team was the Sandy 1 team of Kara Ormond, Ingunn Earl and Kim Hart.

Race director Bob Wood said the team competition "really started to pick up steam near the end of registration. I think by next year, we'll start to see a lot of other teams get involved and entered in the competition."

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Deseret Morning News/KJZZ races

MEN'S TEAM WINNERS

1. SALT LAKE CITY — 1:25:46

Dennis Simonaitis, Teren Jameson, B.J. Christenson

2. LOGAN —1:27:10

Mike Nielsen, Clark Bryner, Demetrio Cabanillas Jr., Dave Danley

3. OGDEN —1:28:31