The indoor track and field teams kicked off their spring semester seasons with an eventful outing at the Rochester Institute of Technology Invitational. Though there was no team scoring at the event, UR’s strength was shown with top-eight finishes in 19 events from the women and in 10 events on the men’s side. In addition, there were multiple top-eight finishers in six of the women’s events, and there were multiple top-eight finishers in three of the men’s events.
The women had two individual champions. Senior Stacie Woods took the crown in the 500-meter dash with a time of 1:23.76. Senior Anjuli Cherukuri was the top finisher in the pole vault, clearing the bar set at 3.00 meters.
Freshman Elana Mangano placed behind Cherukuri in the pole vault in fifth, clearing 2.70. The third finisher in the top eight in the pole vault was freshman Kristin Fekete, placing sixth by also clearing 2.70.
In other field events, junior Jamie Landry was second in the high jump at 1.55 meters and seventh in the shot put, throwing 9.58 meters. Sophomore Elise Scheid was fifth in the shot and junior Jonelle Redhead was eighth, with throws of 9.98 and 9.30, respectively. Redhead was also fifth in the weight throw with a throw of 14.26 meters and Scheid was seventh with a distance of 13.40 meters.
In the jumps, sophomore Melissa Skevington was third in the triple jump, making her mark at 10.54 meters, and sixth in the long jump, making it to 4.93 meters. Senior Kathryn Knowles hopped, skipped and jumped her way to sixth in the triple jump with a distance of 10.14.
In the distance events, the Yellowjackets had many more top finishers. In the 1,000-meter run, there were three finishers in the top four. Sophomores Lisa Cole, Suzanne Giunta and Hilary Haefner took second, third and fourth, respectively, with times of 3:12.01, 3:14.71 and 3:17.46. In the 3,000-meter run, senior Kellie Hasselwander placed third with a time of 10:41.17.
In other running events, sophomore Prashanthi Chodagiri was second in the 400-meter dash with a time of 63.19, sophomore Allie McComb was fifth in the 1 mile run with a time of 5:24.84 and sophomore Sadie Gollub finished the 800-meter run 2:31.70 to place eighth.
Landry placed in a second event – the 55-meter hurdles – coming in fourth with a time of 9.63 and freshman Emily Gray was sixth with a time of 9.76.
In the relays, UR was strong, placing second in the distance medley relay with a time of 13:12.15 and third in the 4×400-meter relay with a time of 4:22.29.
For the men, senior Mike Burgstrom was just shy of the NCAA automatic qualifying distance in the weight throw. Burgstrom threw the weight 18.07 meters to win the event and to improve his provisional qualifying distance. He was just 0.43 meters short of the automatic qualifying distance of 18.5 meters.
Sophomore Ethan Kaplan placed eighth in the weight with a distance of 12.64 meters.
The ‘Jackets had first-place finishes in two other events. Junior Malik Sams won the 55-meter hurdles with a time of 7.99 seconds, and the distance medley relay team was champion with a time of 10:32.39.
In field events other than the weight throw, junior Travis Buttaccio placed third in the long jump, leaving a mark at 6.20 meters, and freshman Nicholas Hammond was seventh, with a jump of 5.91 meters.
Junior Kevin Easton was third in the high jump, clearing 1.76 meters, and freshman Dan Abud was fourth in the pole vault at 3.95 meters.
The teams travel to St. Lawrence University this weekend for another invitational.
Philbrick is a member of the class of 2009.
