The women?s track team experienced something that it has not faced yet this season ? nice weather and a high caliber of competition. After Saturday?s six-hour UR Alumni Invitational, the women fell six points short of a victory.
The final team scores were SUNY Geneseo 142, UR 136, SUNY Brockport 57, SUNY Fredonia 55, Roberts Wesleyan College 49, Alfred University 23, Alfred State College 22.
The Yellowjackets earned their points by tallying 11 different second and third-place finishes compared to only three different first place finishes.
?Although the scorebook shows mostly second and third place finishes, those finishes were a lot of personal records for them. You can?t ask for any more than that,? coach Barbara Hartwig said.
In meets this big ? eight teams competed ? second and third-place finishes can sometimes put a team on top, she added.
Distance domination
Last week the throwing team carried UR to a solid victory, and this week it was the mid-distance and distance crew that helped UR to its second-place finish.
Freshman Erika Wasserstein has proven to be a top competitor in the 1500-meter run event. Wasserstein finished second for the second straight meet. This past Saturday, she took five seconds off last week?s time and finished with a time of 4 minutes, 53 seconds.
In other distance events, freshman Mary Lebrun came back from a stress fracture to finish second in the 3000-meter run.
In the 5,000-meter run sophomore Lisa Johns ran a 19:45 to finish in third-place.
Junior Kadie Simon took on the 10,000-meter race and finished the ironman run in a time of 39:53 ? a second-place finish.
The Yellowjackets weren?t as successful in the throwing events as they have been in past competitions. Seniors Ashley Harvey and Stephanie Perry were the only two place winners at the throwing field. Perry had a first-place victory in the javelin with a throw of 31.94 meters and Harvey had a throw of 36.76 meters in the hammer throw and finished in third-place.
A knee injury to sophomore Amanda Baran left the jumping team with a large gap to fill.
Once again, Perry was the only Yellowjacket to place in any jumping event.She jumped a distance of 10.34 meters in the triple jump.
The pole vault event was again dominated by junior Robin Metcalf and sophomore Erin Bank. They finished second and third respectively.
Hurdling the competition
In the hurdle events, sophomore Liz Conway proved to be a force as she demolished the competition in the 100-meter high hurdles.Her time of 16.56 was a half second faster than the second place Katie Neuberger from SUNY Oswego.
Conway also finished in second-place in the 400-meter intermediate hurdle event.
Sophomore Amanda Schwartz-kopf was a second-place finisher in the 200-meter dash and her teammate and freshman Michelle Gabrielle finished the 400-meter dash in third-place.
The 4×400-meter relay team edged out SUNY Geneseo to earn UR?s other first place finish.
The team will travel to the non-scoring Hamilton Invitational this coming weekend before making the long-haul to Philadelphia for the Penn Relays on D-Day.
?The Hamilton Invitational will allow our runners to concentrate on individual performances instead of winning as a team.
