Mar. 12, 2008
Women | Men
This past weekend we traveled to Cleveland (Case Western University) to compete in the UAA Conference Championships.
In terms of the indoor season this is what we consider to be our most important meet. Since the completion of the indoor meet one year ago our goal has been to win this meet.
In ’07 the team championship was determined by the last event of the day (4 x 400) and we unfortunately came out on the short end.
This year the meet again came down to the final event of the day and the results ended up in our favor. The team victory was the first for our women in the history of the UAA.
Over the two-day meet a number of great performances came from the championships. Our young sprinters and throwers in particular made major impacts upon the conference.
Of the six finalists in the 55 meter dash we took three spots all with first year athletes. Stephanie Omueti (Chicago), Margaret Bujarska (DeKalb, IL) and Jordan Dexter (Barto, PA) finished 2nd, 3rd and 6th in the meet. Steph and Margaret both ran faster then our school record with times of 7.33 and 7.34 seconds.
Stephanie came back to win the conference championship in the 200 meter dash in another school record time of 25.88 seconds with Margaret finishing 3rd.
Some of the other highlights from the sprints and hurdles would definitely come from the 55 meter hurdles where we again took three of the top six places.
Meaghan Ehrhard (Jr. Longmeadow, MA) finished 3rd with a time of 8.98 seconds and was followed across the line by two more outstanding first years in Bianca Scott (Excelsior, MN) and Ashley Eaves (Mt. Pleasant, IA).
The throwing events (shot put and 20# weight throw) were perhaps our greatest strength in the meet. In the 20# weight throw sophomore All-American Claire Ray (Park Ridge, IL) won the conference title in an NCAA national qualifying distance of 15.83 meters.
Tiffany Hosten (Jr. Tucson, AZ) and Nicole Murphy (So. Coppell, TX) were our other two entrants in the event and placed 4th and 5th overall.
The next day it was Nicole’s turn to win an event as she threw the shot put a UAA record distance of 13.31 meters in a 1-2-3 sweep of the competition. Second place was awarded to first year Kristin Constantine (Naperville, IL) who missed the NCAA standard by just 1 cm and Claire Ray completed the sweep by finishing 3rd.
Nicole’s mark in the shot put has her in a tie with her teammate, Claire Ray for our school record. Claire threw the same distance in February.
The triple jump was an event where our veterans were in charge. Appie Hirve (Burke, VA), Somayeh Jahedi (Clarendon Hills, IL) and Cynthia Lin (State College, PA) all performed exceptionally well.
Appie finished 2nd with an NCAA qualifying distance of 11.42 meters. Somayeh and Cynthia both had huge seasonal best performances and lifetime best marks of 10.98 and 10.82 meters to finish 3rd and 4th in the meet. Appie had also finished high in both the long jump (3rd) and high jump (4th) competitions earlier in the meet.
The long jump was won by another one of our seniors as Myra Collins (Converse, TX) comfortably outdistanced the field by 10 inches to win her 2nd UAA title in the event.
It would be difficult to mention all the performances that allowed our teams to get to the final goal of the UAA title but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention an All-Time freshman record set by Liz Lawton (N. Easton, MA) on her lead-off leg of the DMR in which she ran a time of 3:46.88 and handed off in the lead in the race.
The next day Liz turned around to run a 10:31 in the 3000 meter run to give us the point differential we needed to hold off Washington's late charge.
I was also extremely pleased with the performance of Rachel Venezia (Jr. Canton, MA) who ran a lifetime best of 18:01 in the 5000 meter run.
Bianca Scott had her best performance of the season in the high jump placing 2nd but clearing the same height as the winner of 1.61 meters (5-3.5).
If you would like to check out all the results please click here.
The majority of our team will now begin preparing for the outdoor season with our inaugural meet on our newly resurfaced outdoor facility on March 29th. The outdoor conference championships arrive quickly and we will also be hosting that meet on April 19th and 20th.
This past weekend we traveled to Cleveland (Case Western University) to compete in the UAA Conference Championships. In terms of the indoor season this is what we consider to be our most important meet of the year. It’s been a while since we have been able to claim a conference championship (’02) and while we knew this was going to be an extremely tight meet our goals were firmly set on winning the team championship.
Our team really performed very well and by the time we got to the last event (4 x 400 relay) the team championship was no longer in doubt. We ended up winning the meet with a team point total of 120 to outdistance a very good Emory squad who had 110.
It’s difficult to really cover all the great performances that helped us to our ultimate team goal of winning the championship as we scored in 15 of the 16 events and proved to have great balance. That balance is really what made the difference but I would like to pass along some of the more obvious highlights.
In the sprinting events we began with three of the six finalists in the 55 meter dash. Bill Cheng (So. Island Lake, IL), Blake Obuchowski (So. Geneva, IL), and Herman Reeves (Jr. Chicago) finished 2nd, 4th and 5th respectfully.
Both Bill and Blake broke our existing school record set in 1958 and met NCAA qualifying standards of 6.41 and 6.43 seconds. Those performances perhaps overshadowed Herman who was within .02 of the old UAA conference record by running 6.50 seconds.
The 55 meter high hurdles had first year Brian Andreycak (Pleasantville, NY) and senior Zach Rodgers (Nashville, TN) both running lifetime best performances of 7.92 and 8.03 seconds to place 3rd and 4th respectfully.
Sophomore Patrick Offner (So. Houston, TX) was our top finisher with a 4th place finish and a lifetime best indoor time of 22.91 seconds. John Eric Humphries (Jr. Eagle River, Alaska) was 4th in the 400 and also ran both our DMR and anchored our 4 x 400 at the end of the two days.
In the middle distance and distance events we had a number of first year runners that truly rose to the challenge of the UAA meet.
Patrick Kane (Villa Park, IL) placed 3rd in the 800 meter run, Harry Backlund (St. Paul, MN) was 2nd in the Mile run, Arthur Baptist (Arlington Heights, IL) was 6th in the 3000 meter run, and we had a wonderful performance in the distance medley relay in which Andrew Wells-Qu (Fr. Bethlehem, CT) Patrick Offner, John Eric Humphries and Harry Backlund finished 3rd in a time of 10:18.
That DMR was certainly highlighted by a tremendous anchor leg in which Harry split 4:13.88 which is a freshman record and a time that would have met an NCAA standard had it not been a split.
The jumping events were also well covered. The triple jump was the clear highlight in which our team finished with a 1-2-3 sweep of the competition. Jacob Solus (Fr. Crestwood, IL), Drew Jackson (Fr. Sugar Hill, GA) and Zach Rodgers. This took place early on the 2nd day of competition and was key in our team really believing we could win the title.
Other jump highlights came from Zach Rodgers also placing in both the long jump and high jump (3rd and 6th), Terrence Robertson (So. Cleveland, OH) placing 5th in the long jump and pole vaulters Seth Satterlee (Jr. New Orleans, LA) and John Pribik (Jr. Indianapolis, IN) finishing 2nd and 5th.
Our throwers had an outstanding couple of days. The weight throw was contested day one and senior John Anderson (Downers Grove, IL) matched his seed by placing 5th.
It was Day 2 in which we were in need of something big to happen to put ourselves into a position to win the conference title. A door opened a little as the #1 seed had a disappointing prelim and did not advance to finals. We advanced three throwers who were seeded 3rd, 5th and 6th coming into the meet. They saw an opportunity and burst onto the stage by placing 1st, 3rd and 4th.
John Anderson again led the way with his first ever conference title and first years Joe Walsh (Cleveland, OH) and John Sabacinski (Charlotte, NC) really got the momentum for the rest of our team going. Instead of getting nine points in that event we totaled 20 and spent the rest of the day just holding teams off.
If you would like to check out all the results please click here. |
