Brianne Theisen

Brianne Theisen

Brianne Theisen (born 18 December 1988) is a Canadian track and field athlete who competes in the heptathlon and women's pentathlon. She was the Canadian heptathlon champion in 2009 and represented her country at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics.

A national junior champion in 2006, she took the heptathlon gold medal at the the following year. She enrolled at the University of Oregon and broke a number of school records in her first three years, winning back-to-back NCAA heptathlon titles in 2009 and 2010. She has also won twice at the NCAA Indoor Championship, including a collegiate pentathlon record in 2011.

Career

Early life

She was raised in Humboldt, Saskatchewan and attended . While at high school she took part in track and field, volleyball and soccer. She found her niche in the track and field combined events and represented Canada at the 2005 World Youth Championships in Athletics, coming seventeenth in the girl's heptathlon. She was the national junior champion in the heptathlon in 2006 and took part in the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Beijing. In her senior year at high school she won the gold medal at the .

College athletics

She received a sports scholarship at the University of Oregon, where she started a major in business administration in late 2007. In her first year she was the runner-up at the Pac-10 championships and came fourth in the heptathlon at the NCAA Women's Outdoor Track and Field Championship. Theisen began her second year with a third place finish in the pentathlon at the NCAA Women's Indoor Track and Field Championship. The outdoor season saw her establish herself among the world elite in the heptathlon. She won the Pac-10 title, then set a personal record of 6086 points to win her first NCAA outdoor title, before finally going on to take the national heptathlon title that summer. This earned her a spot on the national team to make her senior international debut at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics. As Canada's only representative in the event, she came in fifteenth place. In addition to her athletic breakthrough, she also received a mention for All-Academic honours that year.

Theisen continued her strong college form into the following year, winning her first pentathlon title at the 2010 NCAA Indoors with a college record of 4396 points and repeating as the Pac-10 Outdoor heptathlon champion. She also took a second consecutive victory at the NCAA Outdoors, improving her personal record to 6094 points. This total ranked her within the top twenty athletes in her discipline worldwide that year. At the NCAA Outdoors she had her second win of the competition when she helped the Oregon women's team to the 4×400-meter relay title. That year she also led Oregon to a decathlon/heptathlon double at the Texas Relays, as she claimed the win alongside her schoolmate Ashton Eaton.

Competition record

References

External links

• Athlete profile at Athletics Canada

Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brianne_Theisen