The Hillsdale College women’s track and field team continued to make forward strides at the Hillsdale Border Battle track meet last weekend, with the 4×100 meter relay breaking the school record and many other athletes improving their seasonal marks.
Even after breaking the school record, head coach Andrew Towne believes the relay can go much faster. The relay team — freshman Tori Wichman, senior Corinne Zehner, and sophomores Fiona Shea and Ashlee Moran — has a lot of talent, but is also comprised of underclassmen with little experience working with one another, and as a result the relay members struggled making hand-offs.
“The 4×100 happens in a short amount of time and everyone has to do their job,” Towne said. “They broke the school record making a decent amount of mistakes, and I still think they can get considerably faster.”
Junior thrower Dana Newell is also getting close to surpassing her own school record in the hammer throw.
The women haven’t yet broken as many outdoor school records as they did during the indoor season, but Towne says that since the team has improved so much, it’s getting more difficult to set new records.
“Sometimes I think that we get to a place where we think, ‘Oh we’ve only broken a few school records,’ because we’re so used to continuing to move forward, but they’re not easy to break either,” Towne said.
While not breaking her own school record in the hammer throw, Newell was named the team’s athlete of the week for her solid performances in the hammer throw (182’3’’) and the shot put (39’10.5’’) against top GLIAC competition.
Sophomore Rachael Tolsma placed right behind Newell in the hammer throw with an impressive mark of 177 feet, 4 inches. Both Newell and Tolsma have made provisional marks for the NCAA outdoor championship in the hammer throw.
After struggling in the pole vault at the Miami Hurricane Alumni Invitational two weekends ago, junior Alex Whitford bounced back, winning the pole vault with a height of 3.67 meters, only 0.14 meters off the personal best she set as a freshman in 2014.
Zehner had a busy meet, running in the record-breaking 4×100 relay, and placing second in both the 100-meter and 400-meter hurdles.
Zehner was happy with her performances in the 100-meter hurdles and 4×100 relay, but is waiting for another chance to run the 400 hurdles and “get back on her feet.”
“I ran the 100-hurdle prelims and the finals. The finals went better than the prelims; both were pretty decent times for this time of the year, I would have liked to run a little faster though, honestly,” Zehner said. “That’s a race that I had a breakthrough in last year and so to not pick up exactly where I left off has been a little frustrating, but I’m working on finding my rhythm again.”
Towne also mentioned junior Allison Duber’s season-best time (56.31 seconds) and win in the 400-meter dash and freshman Wichman’s sub-25 second 200-meter dash as other top sprinting performances from the meet.
“We have three girls who will run under 25 seconds before the year is over,” Towne said. “You have to be that level to be a national level 4×100 relay team.”
While some of the top distance and middle distance women had last weekend off, a number of athletes in those training groups also had notable performances at the meet.
Sophomore Andie Bodary placed second in the 1500-meter, with a personal best time of 4:44. Junior Meri Didier came in second in the 5K, running the distance in 18:16.
Saturday’s meet also saw freshman Ally Eads and sophomore Amanda Reagle open up the season in the 3000-meter steeplechase. Eads won the race in 11:11 and Reagle came in second at 11:25.
Although Eads enjoyed winning her first steeplechase, she thinks she can run faster and hit the provisional mark of 11:05 when she runs the race again this weekend at the Georgia Tech Invitational in Atlanta.
“I definitely want to go sub-11,” Eads said. “I definitely think that I can do that.”
For the third time this season, the women will be splitting their squad and to compete in two different meets over the weekend. Half of the team will travel down to Atlanta for the Georgia Tech Invitational this weekend, with other members of the team traveling to Allendale, Michigan, to run the Al Owens Invitational at Grand Valley State University.