After winning the indoor conference championship, the women’s track and field team has looked to continue their success and hold up to their 5th place national ranking this outdoor season. In order to give every runner an opportunity to race this past weekend, the team split up into three different, but competitive meets: the Stanford Invitational, the San Francisco State Distance Carnival, and Millersville Metrics in Pennsylvania. The Lady Jays competed against many top Division I teams and put up strong performances in each meet.
114 colleges, including four of the top five Division I teams in the country, kicked things off at the Stanford Invite last Friday. Sophomore Megan McDonald did not let the competition get to her, but instead used it to her advantage.
“Competing against [Division I] teams is definitely more exciting because the better competition creates the right conditions to race well, and it's fun to go into a race knowing that it's the perfect conditions to run well,” McDonald said.
This proved to work well for her as she broke two of her own school records in the 400 meter dash and 400 meter hurdles. Her time of 57.07 in the 400 dash broke the previous school record of 57.68 that she set at last year’s conference championship. She was even more impressive in the 400 hurdles though, finishing second in her heat with a time of 62.09, and beating her previous school record by .69 seconds. She is now only one-tenth of a second away from the conference record set by Christine Hufenbacher back in 2002.
Despite these records, McDonald does not focus on these, but instead tries to fulfill her overall goal of qualifying for nationals.
“I don't usually think about breaking records or anything like that. I really went to this meet to try and get fast times to qualify for nationals, and it's always awesome that records go along with that,” McDonald said.
Junior Frances Loeb ran a personal best in the 5000m. Her time of 16:54 was good for 9th overall in her race, and it beat her previous outdoor best by over 46 seconds. Senior Maggie Shelton, who finished second at indoor Nationals in the 800, also ran a personal best in the 800 with a time of 2:09.56.
Freshman Tess Meehan turned out a great performance in her first 1500 race, finishing 9th with a time of 4:38.10. Despite only being a freshman, her time in the event was the fastest by a Hopkins girl this year.
Just a few miles away at the San Francisco State Carnival the Hopkins girls were having similar success against the 1300 college athletes there. Sophomore Sophia Meehan ran a personal best of 16:57.05 in the 5k to finish 7th overall in a race of almost 100 runners. Junior Gabi Drummond and sophomore Courtney Kelly both ran personal records, with times of 17:37.09 and 17.37.21 respectively. Drummond and Kelly worked together the whole race pushing each other to the finish, the way they have done in practice all year.
“It was really helpful having Courtney [Kelly] in the race. We definitely worked off each other and took turns leading, which made it easier to not drop off the pace. We have a really good group of girls all around the same pace in the 5K group for practices. We all push each other in workouts, and it’s awesome to have so many girls to train with.”
Back on the East Coast, the runners were experiencing strong winds that made it difficult to race. Although many of the times were slower as a result of the weather, the girls still placed very well with sophomore Brynn Parson leading the sprinting events. She finished 6th in the 100 meter dash with a time of 12.81 and 19th in the 200-meter dash, among a field of 77 runners, with a time of 26.70. Her junior teammate Kelley Hussey finished close behind her in the 100, finishing 10th in 12.98. Despite the tough conditions, her time was just .06 seconds off her best.
In the 1500, Hopkins dominated the competition, placing four girls in the top ten. Caroline Powers led the way with a time of 4:57.06, good enough for third place. Finishing just a few seconds behind her were several of her teammates; freshman Veronica Boswell finished fifth with a time of 4:58.56, senior Shayna Rose seventh in 5:01.20 and freshman Lindsey Cheu ninth in 5:03.07.
In the 5K, senior teammates Katie Rownd and Molly Van Doren helped push each other to top 10 finishes with times of 19:11.37 and 19:11.57, respectively. Both of their times were over 10 seconds faster than their previous week’s race.
Hopkins looks to continue their success next weekend when they split up for the Mount St. Mary’s Multi and Widener Invitational.
