The women?s track team did not let the less than ideal conditions affect its performance this past Saturday.
It steamrolled over SUNY Oswego, Hamilton College and the Rochester Institute of Technology with a score of 220 points. Oswego came in second with 160 points, just over third-place Hamilton with 154 points. RIT struggled throughout the meet, wrapping up with 11 points.
The Yellowjackets? victory was helped largely by athletes outside of Fauver Stadium. The throwing team, which competes at the Graduate Living Center, placed athletes in the top three spots for all four throwing events.
The only event in which the Yellowjackets didn?t place at least two athletes was the shot put. Freshman Laura Steiner placed third and managed to prevent a sweep by the SUNY Oswego throwers.
In the hammer throw, senior Ashley Harvey and junior Megan Sullivan placed first and second, respectively. Harvey surpassed Sullivan?s throw by three feet with an impressive throw of 121 meters.
For the discus and javelin throw, UR had two different athletes leading the way. Sophomore Aileah Kvashay threw the discus to a mark of 33.70 meters and senior Stephanie Perry won the javelin with a throw of 30.64 meters.
Harvey and Sullivan won third place for the discus throw and javelin events respectively.
?I was very pleased with the throwers? performances,? coach Barbara Hartwig said. ?For only being able to practice outside a couple of times they really performed well.?
Meanwhile, at Fauver Stadium, the Yellowjackets were also in control of the track events.
Sophomore Liz Conway continued her stellar year by placing in the top two for three different events. In the 100-meter high hurdle event, she earned a first- place victory by running a time of 17.02 seconds.
She also had second-place finishes in the 100-meter dash and the 400-meter intermediate hurdles. She ran times of 14.22 seconds and 1 minute, 11.33 seconds respectively.
In the 200-meter dash, junior Sue Mayo ran a third-place time of 28.45 seconds.
The jumping pits were filled as much with success as they were with water. The tandem of junior Robin Metcalf and sophomore Erin Bank came in first and second place in the pole-vault. Metcalf came out on top with a vault of 2.67 meters, and Bank had an impressive jump of 2.52 meters.
Metcalf?s jump tied a UR record for the outdoor pole-vault event.
The long jump event featured a pair of freshman Yellowjackets who placed second and third.
Freshman Michelle Gabrielle edged out freshman Katrina Nowak to earn a second-place finish. Perry jumped to a mark of 9.85 meters in the triple jump and earned second place.
Representing UR in the high jump was sophomore Kim Pul-aski who earned a second-place finish with a jump of 1.35 meters.
Once again the distance team had an impressive result with four top-three performances.
The strongest event for UR was the 1500-meter run.
Freshman Er-ika Wasserstein and junior Aman-da Danforth wrapped up a second and third place finish respectively. Was-serstein?s time of 4:58 was only two seconds behind the first place finisher and sophomore Jen Cam-marano from Hamilton College.
Danforth also racked up a second place finish in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 11:19. Junior Ashley Ellms was the other competitor placing for the Yellowjacket distance team. She finished in third with a time of 2:29.
?The distance and mid-distance runners picked up right where they left off from the indoor season,? Hartwig said. ?I was real impressed with everybody?s performance.?
?I thought the weather conditions were going to affect the performances today, but the team really came out strong and proved me wrong,? she said.
The team is on the track this Saturday as it competes in the UR Alumni Invitational starting at 11 a.m.
