The women’s track and field team followed up their seventh-place finish at State Championships with a much better outcome at Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championships on March 4 and 5 at St. Lawrence University. The team finished an impressive fifth out of the 36 teams that scored points in the meet.
“We focused on a few specific events, and we were overwhelmingly successful,” Head Coach Barbara Hartwig said.
Freshman Stacie Woods ran 1:20.49 in the 500-meter dash to finish in second place. In the 800-meter run, senior Katie O’Brien finished first with a time of 2:17.31. The time met the provisional qualifying standard for National Collegiate Athletic Association Championships, although the final qualifying time was ultimately lower.
Freshman Kellie Hasselwander was third in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 3:06.34. In the 3,000-meter run, junior Jessica Van Binsbergen finished in 10:58.24 to earn eighth place.
The 3,200-meter relay team of Hasselwander, Woods, O’Brien and sophomore Nora Craighead ran 9:56.63, finishing fifth. Senior Anna Barbi scored 2,946 points in the pentathlon, finishing third.
In the weight throw, senior Anne Baker marked 15.12 meters to finish in sixth place. With a mark of 16.20 meters in the state championship meet, Baker’s best of the season, she qualified for NCAA Championships as the eighth overall seed.
With a mark of 15.59 meters in the preliminary round at NCAA’s at Illinois Wesleyan University, she finished 10th, less than three inches short of the ninth and final qualifier.
“I was very pleased with how Anne competed at Nationals,” Hartwig said.
The strong performances over the past two weeks should give the team some added confidence going into the outdoor season.
“I think that [the team] now understands that we can be pretty good,” Hartwig said. “We’re certainly going to push them harder, because we know they’re capable of it.”
Swidler can be reached at dswidler@campustimes.org.
