For every impressive performance that they had, there was a disappointing one to match this weekend for the Penn's women's track team at the Raleigh Relays at North Carolina State.
"We got some good times and distances," Penn senior Kristen Koch said. "We were running against a lot of teams we don't usually run against."
Koch jumped into the 10,000 meter run having never participated in the event before. She surprised her teammates and even herself with her 36:57.98 finish for 18th place.
"It's a tough race, probably the toughest race, but this was one of the best places to run it," Koch said. "I felt pretty strong and ended up doing well."
Koch admitted that her success was perhaps due to the caliber of those competing in the race. Four of these athletes were from Yale, two of whom-- Kate and Laura O'Neill -- finished first and second in the event and Nadia Sawicki finished just a few seconds behind Koch for 19th.
Junior Erin Rhoades agreed that the competition spurred good races, adding that Koch did so well because she's "ignorant to the pain."
Senior Julie Siebert-Johnson shined in the javelin throw with a 159-foot throw -- four feet farther than at last week's meet -- and finished third. Not far behind was junior Kai Ivory in 17th with a 129-foot throw.
Freshman Charity Payne also had a successful meet, finishing 17th in the shot put with a 13.20-meter throw. According to Rhoades, many of the athletes in the field events did extremely well, but this was not apparent in the meet results, due to the nature of the meet.
"If you don't throw far enough, the officials don't even mark your throw," Erin Rhoades said. "The standards in this meet were really tough. Our throwers could have all thrown PR's [personal records] and no one will never know."
Those that didn't get their throws marked included hammer throwers Christin Royer, Heidi Albrecht and Michelle Bowen.
"I didn't get a personal record but I was pleased with my throw," Royer said.
The 4x400m relay ran nearly six seconds faster than it did last week and one of its fastest races of the year. They finished 20th overall, just three-tenths of a second behind Lincoln University in 3:55.65 seconds.
"A bunch of people improved at this meet but a lot of people also tried new things," Koch said. "It gave us a little more confidence so we can keep improving."
In the 400m hurdles, both Michelle Hart and Crystal Marsh improved fairly significantly from last week. Finishing 29th, Hart ran a 1:04.54, one minute faster than before. Just four people behind Hart, Marsh finished in 1:04.79, half of a second better than last week.
"We did some bad things, but we also did some really good things," said Royer.
