Relay headlines W. Track tri-meet

With several stand-out performances as well as success across all the field events, the Penn women's track team was satisfied with its performance despite losing to Princeton and Yale last weekend.

The 4x400m relay came in second with a time of 4:11.58. Despite running the event toward the end of the meet and having little recovery from other events, Michelle Hart, Crystal Marsh, Petra Stewart and Susan Eisenberg ran their best time of the season.

"The race was fun to watch," junior Ingrid Gustafson said. "It was really competitive, and everyone was really close until the end of the race. We were in first for a while."

Before running in the 4x400m relay, Hart competed in both the 100m and 400m hurdles. Hart finished second and her time --14.20 seconds -- was not only a personal record but good enough to qualify for the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference championships.

"It was an interesting meet, since there were only three teams," Hart said. "There were only about 20 minutes between each of my events. It was more reminiscent of a workout."

Junior Kai Ivory qualified for the NCAA Regional Championships with a javelin throw of 43.63m. Her second-place finish was just six feet behind senior Julie Siebert-Johnson's winning 45.55m throw.

"Everyone was really excited to go out and compete this weekend," freshman Michelle Bowen said. "We did really well in the field with at least two people placing in each event."

Bowen's contribution to the field included a first-place hammer throw of 46.21m and seventh-place discus throw of 29.75m.

The Quakers took three of the top triple-jumper's places with Meghan Moran, Gina Chuang and Gustafson finishing second, third and fourth.

"The triple jump and the pole vault went on at the same time," Gustafson said. "The pole vault was supposed to happen earlier, but it was raining. Then the weather cleared up, and I had to run back and forth, but I was happy with how I did."

The shotputters threw better than the Tigers and the Elis with Charity Payne, Mikaelyn Austin and Heidi Albrecht all finishing in the top five in the event.

Although the athletes in the running events brought in fewer points for the Quakers, they were happy with those that scored and the goals that were met.

"We had some really good breakout performances," Gustafson said. "Our coaches were really happy that people were being competitive."

According to Hart, the team is just starting to get consistent and wants to get in as many good marks as they can before the Heptagonals. With this goal in mind, Bowen said that everyone felt like the meet at Yale was only "one step in the long process."

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