Smith College Track and Field: Exciting Performances at the Beynon Invitational

Kirsten PRs in the 60m hurdles.

Smith hosted its final home meet of the season on Saturday, January 19. It proved to be an excited meet for a variety of reasons. Senior Kirsten Silfvenius placed first in the 60m hurdles with a new PR of 9.39 seconds. She has now qualified for the Open New England, NE Division III, and the ECAC Championships in the hurdles. She also won the unusual and rarely offered 500m event with a time of 1:21.21, which qualifies her for New England Div III and ECACs.

Meadeshia Mitchell en route to a first place in the 400m.

First year Meadeshia Mitchell won the 400m event in 1:02.28, which qualifies her for New England Div III Championship.

Junior Abby Mosca set a personal record in the mile with a time of 5:37.79, and teammate Atema Addy, now with two weeks of shot putting practice under her belt, improved her throw by a quarter of a meter. In the 3k, Lotte Dzialo ran even splits and would have passed the girl in front of her had there been one more lap (which, due to some poorly timed last-lap bell-ringing, she thought there was. Sign this girl up for the 10k!)

There were a few other notable performances. In her first track meet performance ever, Yoo Eun Kim raced 1000m and had enough left in her to run a leg of the 4x800 relay. Brianna Jackson has successfully transitioned from sprinting and is now running soundly into the middle distance category; she tried out the 600m as well as running a leg of the 4x800 relay. Speaking of that relay....it was the last event of the day, starting at 5:25pm, the time when most athletes and spectators are ready to re-enter the world beyond the vortex of the indoor track , but Abby, Katie, Brianna, and Yoo Eun stayed focused and energized to represent Smith in this final event. This relay team showed all the other teams what good baton hand-offs look like and managed to finished the meet strong, earning some final points for Smith!

Although injury prevented Maya and Lauren from competing, it did not prevent them from being photogenic...or from cheering on their teammates throughout the meet. Big thanks to Micaela (also injured, but not for long) for taking splits all day, to Victoria for getting a fantastic camera to bring to the meet, and for all the team members who helped take pictures throughout the day. Here is a sampling of a few of them.