Track: WVU Tied for Sixth at BIG EAST
February 23, 2008 09:21 PM | General
February 23, 2008
DAY ONE RESULTS
NEW YORK CITY – The West Virginia University track & field team sits in sixth place with 17.5 points after the first of two days of competition at the BIG EAST Indoor Championships at The Armory in New York City.
West Virginia’s distance medley relay, comprised of Keri Bland (1,200m), April Rotilio (400m), Karly Hamric (800m) and Marie-Louise Asselin (1,600m), set a new BIG EAST record en route to winning the event in 11:16.87. WVU’s Asselin was able to hold off the final distance runner of Georgetown’s relay to leave the Hoyas in second at 11:17.24. WVU’s first place finish gave the Mountaineers 10 points.
The previous league record was held by Villanova’s 1994 DMR squad at 11:22.88.
“We had a pretty solid day,” Head Coach Sean Cleary says. “We fell short in a few areas, but we’ll be ready to come back tomorrow and fight for everything we can get.”
Freshman Chelsea Carrier was impressive in her debut at the league championships. Carrier posted the second fastest time in the preliminaries of the 60-meter hurdles at 8.42. That personal-best mark was an NCAA provisional time and the Buckhannon, W.Va., native will compete in the 60-meter hurdle finals Sunday.
Carrier also placed sixth in the pentathlon with a career-high 3,665 points. Carrier’s finish awarded WVU three team points.
Distance runner Clara Grandt gave WVU two points by running a career-best 16:51.11 in the 5,000-meter run for seventh place.
Bland, despite running the event for the first time in her career, ran the fastest 1,000-meter time in the preliminaries at 2:52.77 and will race in the finals of that event Sunday.
Rotilio ran a career-best 55.51 in the 400 meters to qualify for tomorrow’s finals.
In the field events, Kristen Loughry tied for fifth in the pole vault, clearing a height of 3.60 meters. Loughry’s finish added 2.5 points to WVU’s team score. Senior Alexis Noel qualified for the finals in the long jump (5.84m) and finished ninth.
Action at the BIG EAST Indoor Championships resumes tomorrow at 8 a.m.
