Smith College Track and Field: PRs Trampled at Tufts Stampede Invitational

Go Maya!

The Smith Track and Field team had a huge day on Saturday as they competed at the Tufts Stampede Invitational. The hugeness of the day, for starters, was the sheer length of it. The team's bus rolled out at 6:30am from Smith and returned at 8:30pm. Also, there was the size of the meet, with 22 teams competing--so many that we could not all fit in one gym, so much of the day was spent navigating back and forth between the two locations: one for the team's camp and one for competition. However, the results from the day were huge as well. The team had six PRs: Abby and Lotte both PRed in the 3k; Micaela and Cynthia PRed in the mile; Maya PRed in the high jump; and Kirsten PRed in the 60m hurdles. Also huge: in Paige's first meet (after 4 days of practice), she shot putted 9.93 m and earned 16th place!

There were also a few notable performances that deserve a bit more mention than the finish time alone. Abby's performance in the 3k came right out of a scene in a movie. She ran the race of her life, almost beating a former teammate who had previously beaten her by 30 seconds. Abby started towards the back of the pack and slowly made her way to the front, lap by lap, checking off the other runners as she passed them. She and her former teammate dueled out the final 800, pushing each other to the limit, both refusing to give up the fight. Abby's final time of 10:57 is a 13 second PR.

The question arises at every indoor track meet, once six or seven hours have passed inside the facility: what were we thinking, entering the 4x800, the LAST event of the meet? If we did not race the 4x800, we could leave before the 5ks! However, Kirsten, Meadeshia, Micaela, and Abby proved why we stick around. All had competed earlier in the day and were exhausted, but they rocketed around the track like it was the first race of the day. Their final time, 10:10, was fast enough to qualify them to run at the Armory for the ECAC Indoor Championship.