NEWMAC Championship: A Grand Finale to the Regular Season!

Lotte, Katie, and Danielle take off in the 5k.

The NEWMAC Conference Championship took place on Saturday, April 27, at Springfield College Blake Track.  The weather was pretty much as perfect as it could be for a track meet - warm but not too warm, a slight breeze but not windy.  The Smith Track and Field team came ready to compete.

The team tent area was conveniently located next to the speakers blaring a wide variety of music from the past three decades.  Paige, Micaela, and Kirsten (with Katie Ferrall on maracas!) led the team in a warm-up dance party.  Throws coach Erica even busted a few of her own old-school moves when the classic "Bust a Move" (circa 1991) came on for about 15 seconds.

The team kept rocking as long jump, high jump, and shot put began, and they did not stop until the final event of the 4x400 relay.  There were so many outstanding performances that it is hard to know where to begin, so we'll start with the team's nominees for track athlete, field athlete, and teammate of the meet (we had plenty of time while waiting for the awards ceremony to nominate and vote).

Kristi Hammond, en route to a PR.

The Track Athlete of the Meet award goes to Kristi Hammond, although there were some murmurs of giving her an award in an entirely new category: Meet Superstar.  This is Kristi's first year at Smith and first season participating in track and field.  She comes to practice every day ready to work hard, and she arrives at meets ready to compete.  She competed in three events at NEWMAC and got a personal best in all three of them.  She took three seconds off her 400 time, finishing in 63.25 (and narrowly missed scoring a point for Smith, finishing in 9th place).  In the 200, she took two seconds off her time, finishing in 28.67 seconds.  In high jump, she jumped 1.45m, once again, just out of scoring positing in 10th place.

Amanda hands off to Meadeshia in the 4x400.

The Field Athlete of the Meet award goes to senior Amanda Zakoske who placed third in the javelin with a new personal record of 35.70m (which qualifies her for Div III NE Championship next weekend).  Amanda also came in 13th in the high jump (1.40m), and placed eighth for Smith in the 100m hurdles, setting a  PR of 15.72 in the prelims.  There's more.  Amanda also raced the second leg in both the 4x100m and 4x400m relays, helping Smith take fourth place in both events.

The award for Teammate of the Meet goes to junior Paige Sarlandt.  Not only did she lead the team dance party, but she also set a personal record in the shot put (11.37m), finishing third.  When she was not competing, she managed to be everywhere else at once, cheering on teammates, checking them in for events, helping at the end of races, and keeping everyone smiling.

There are many other performances to highlight.  Senior Kirsten Silfvenius hurdled to a NEWMAC Championship Record in the 400m hurdles, placing first with a time of 62.30.  She came in second in the 100m high hurdles with a time of 14.92 in the prelims and 14.97 in the finals.  She also anchored both of the relays, flying in with a sub-60-second 400 in the 4x4, almost catching WPI at the end.  Senior Kristen Warren PRed in both the 100m (14.30) and 200m (28.68) dashes.  Senior Becca Gordon PRed in the discus with a throw of 32.55m.  She also took 7th in the javelin (31.00m) and narrowly missed scoring in shot put (9th place, 10.44m).  Junior Maya Rittmanic came in fourth in the high jump (1.58m), fourth in the triple jump (10.46m), and seventh in the long jump (4.87m).  Junior Sonia Brown raced to a new PR in the 100m dash with a time of 13.28 seconds.  Junior Micaela Young shaved a second off of her 1500m time with a PR of 5:09.01.  In the 5k, first year Lotte Dzialo achieved her season goal of breaking 20 minutes with a time of 19:56.04, and first year Danielle Opatovsky, who has been out most of the season with injury and illness, took the 5k field by surprise, finishing second (thanks to a gutsy kick and pushing through the finish line) with a time of 18:15.03.  In the 400m, first year Meadeshia Mitchell finished fifth and qualified for Division III New England Championships next weekend with a time of 60.79 seconds.

As a team, Smith finished fifth out of ten with a score of 67.  MIT, Wheaton, Springfield, and WPI took first through fourth places.

Thus, the regular season has ended, but many athletes will continue competing for the next several weeks.  First up is Div III New England Championships at Colby College (May 3-4).

Finally, a huge thanks to Katie's mom Jennifer Dempsey for taking these fantastic pictures.

Kristi, Kristen, and Sonia

Kristen, en route to a PR

Danielle in the 5k

Paige, aka Rock Star

Kirsten in the 100mHH

Becca watching her disc land in a PR

Sonia sprints to a new PR

Katie and Lotte work together in the 5k

Amanda hands off to Meadeshia in the 4x400

Meadeshia flies

Meadeshia hands off to anchor, Kirsten

Kirsten races to the finish

UMass Invitational - PR-fest for Smith!

The Smith Team had an exciting day on Saturday.  The list of PRs kept growing and growing as the day went on...by the end of the day it was almost as long as the walk from the track to the javelin site.

A few highlights from the meet: Paige Sarlandt got the team's PR-fest rolling with a shot put of 11.30m early in the morning.  Then the distance team came to the starting line for the 5k.  Cynthia took 30 seconds off her previous time, finishing in 19:40.  Lotte took 12 seconds off her time, finishing in 20:00.  And Katie D raced thirty seconds faster than during the cross country season, finishing in 20:20.  In the 1500, Katie Ferrall took 8 seconds off her time, finishing in 4:53.15.  That means she is .15 seconds away from qualifying for Div III New England Championships!  Micaela Young also PRed in the 1500, shaving six seconds off her time from two weeks ago.  She finished 5:10.34.  Although Abby just missed her 5k PR, this was her first meet back from being injured, so it was exciting simply to have her in the race, not to mention a stellar and gutsy performance to boot.

First year Kristi Hammond had a personal best in the 400 (66.56) and the high jump, where she cleared 1.41m.

Although Kirsten did not set a new PR, she came pretty close in both of her hurdles events.  She came in fifth in the 100m hurdles with a time of 14.98 seconds.  She finished second in the 400m hurdles with a time of 63.26.   These times qualify her in both events for Div III New Englands, ECACs, and Open New Englands.  Kirsten also anchored the 4x400 team through an exciting final lap to a first place win in their heat.

There were other performances of note: Meadeshia is back!  After several weeks of injury, she was able to race in the 800, finishing in 2:26.82.  Although this is a teaser of what her legs can actually do, it was exciting to have her racing again.  In the javelin, Becca had a season best of 30.79m, with each throww landing farther than the previous one.  And Amanda made her first 100m hurdles appearance this season.  She is ready for the heptathlon next weekend!

While the team normally goes to Maine for the invitational at Bowdoin next weekend, Carla made a wise, wise decision this year to go south instead.  Since we are still wearing tights and long-sleeves at practice and wondering if spring will ever actually appear, we are looking forward to competing at Connecticut College instead of Antarctica, I mean Maine, next weekend.

Smith Competes at AIC

The Smith College women contested their second outdoor track & field meet at AIC last weekend. Despite cool and windy conditions the Pioneers performed exceptionally. On the track, Kirsten Silfvenius posted two top-five performances; she ran 15.80 in the 100mH to claim fourth in that event and 1:03.99 to win the 400mH. Top 25 track performances at this ten-team meet included Sonia Brown in the 100m, Kirsten in the 200m and Katie Ferrall in the 800m. On the field, weight throwers Becca Gordon and Paige Sarlandt posted impressive marks. Becca's 29.64m javelin throw earned her seventh in that event and her 29.32m send in the discus ranked her eleventh. Paige placed eighth in the shot with a put of 10.99m.

Complete results can be found here:
http://www.aicyellowjackets.com/custompages/woutdoor/2013/AIC%204-6-13.htm

The Pioneers will be at UMass next weekend. See you all there!

Outdoor track season is under way at last!

The transition to competing and practicing outside was welcomed warmly after months inside, but the outside did not welcome us warmly.  Snow fell during spring break, re-covering the track that had finally just melted.  During the past two weeks of practice, we have had two days with snow flurries.  But we can handle all kinds of weather at practice if we continue to have track meet days as gloriously perfect as last Saturday's meet at Mount Holyoke.  The sun shone brightly, and the air was crisp and clear.  It was warm enough to be comfortable when running, but not so warm that you wanted to take off your jacket when cheering.  (Of course, there were occasional big gusts of wind, but that's a different story.  Suffice it to say that our relationship with the team tent has been forever changed.)

It was a perfect day for an outdoor track meet!  Good bye to cramped indoor tracks where you have to navigate jumpers, throwers, runners warming up, and sprinters finishing to get to the water fountain.  Hello Outdoor Track, where getting from the javelin to the long jump takes enough time that you might need to reapply sunscreen.

There were several notable performances from the meet.  Maya broke the facility record in the high jump with a jump of 1.60m, which qualified her for ECACs and Div III NE Championships.  The 4x100 relay team of Sonia, Amanda, Kirsten, and Maya came in first, and the 4x400 team of distance runners (Katie F, Danielle, Micaela, and Katie D) came in fourth place!  Both Cynthia and Lotte PRed in the 5k (20:09 and 20:12 respectively), and Kirsten qualified for post-season competition in both the 100m hurdles and 400m hurdles.

Also of note:
The Award for Field Athlete of the Meet went to Paige Sarlandt, who PRed in the shot put (10.54m) and competed in the discus for the first time, after just a week of practice.  Each of her attempts was a meter longer than the previous, finishing at 25.05m.
The Award for Track Athlete of the Meet was given to the Distance 4x400, mentioned above.
Finally, the award for Teammate of the Meet went to Abby.  She was unable to compete because of an injury, so she spent the meet cheering on her teammates and helping with warm ups.

We will post pictures soon!  The team competes again this Saturday at AIC in Springfield.