Rachel Bloom leads women's relay team to NCAA Championship

The youngest leg of the women's 4x400 relay team, freshman Rachel Bloom, is also the most surprising member of a squad that will compete in the NCAA Div. III National Track Championships tomorrow. Given that she was a short sprinter in high school, neither Bloom nor women's track and field coach Kristen Morwick expected to see her running the 400.

Bloom will be joined in the relay by juniors Jessica Trombly and Emily Bersin and sophomore Sika Henry. Tufts iis seeded eighth of only nine teams accepted into the event, which will be held at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Morwick said that just competing at the NCAA meet is a huge accomplishment, and that "finishing top eight, which means All-American, would be unbelievable."

Regardless of tomorrow's NCAA results, Bloom has had a stellar first season at Tufts. This winter, she has dropped her 55-meter dash mark to 7.52 seconds and her open 200 time to 26.31. More surprising, though, is the fact that Bloom has excelled in the 4x400 relay, running a distance that she had never attempted before this season.

"Coming into college, I thought I'd never run the 400," Bloom said. "But I love relays, and I think I work harder when I'm running for a team. So being on the 4x400 has been great even though you feel like crap after the race."

Bloom's intense work ethic meant that she was well prepared to move up to the more grueling 400 race, Morwick suggested.

"She works so hard that she is used to being in pain, so the 400 wasn't so awful," Morwick said. "And we didn't shock her with the 400 until February."

Since her 4x400 debut last month, Bloom has "started to realize how to run the race," Morwick said. "We still train her shorter than everyone else [on the relay], so the fact that she's running the second-fastest split there is amazing."

Bloom ran her best 400 split, 58.4 seconds, at last weekend's ECAC Championships. Her relay's first-place finish over schools that had qualified automatically for the NCAAs bodes well for the quartet, as does their overall team dynamics, Morwick said.

As freshmen, both Trombly and Bersin ran the 4x400 at the outdoor NCAAs. Trombly also ran the 400 leg of an All-American Distance Medley Relay that placed fifth in the 2001 Indoor National Championships. This year, Morwick said that the relay's older members have played a "supportive" role in Bloom's entire season.

"All three have been really encouraging to Rachel and taken her under their wing," Morwick said. She also noted that Trombly and Bersin's experiences are especially relevant to Bloom because "they were in the same boat coming into college." Morwick explained that neither was primarily a 400 runner in high school, so both went through transitions similar to Bloom's this year.

"So now they can say, 'we didn't come in as 400 runners either but we love the relay and we can be successful with it,'" Morwick said.

Bloom credited the upperclassmen with her quick adaptation to the team and to her new event.

"It's helped to have everybody who's already had experience on the team with me," Bloom said.

Bloom also called the experience of her coaches "awesome." Both Morwick and Assistant Coach Sarah Deeb ran collegiately, at Dartmouth and Tufts, respectively.

"They really know what they're talking about and work with me on an individual basis," Bloom said.

A knowledgeable, consistent coach is something new to Bloom, who called her high school coaching "scattered." At Sharon High School in Sharon, Massachusetts, she ran under a different coach each year.

"My coaches junior and senior year were just parents overseeing the track team, so the other captains and I had to make up workouts," Bloom recalled.

Nevertheless, the two-season captain sprinted at the All-State meet on multiple occasions. She played varsity soccer throughout high school, but only joined an intramural team at Tufts this fall, choosing to focus her athletic efforts on the track. Morwick said she has been pleasantly surprised at just how successful Bloom's first season as a Jumbo has been.

"I thought that of our short sprinters she'd be one of the best, but I didn't expect her to be our fastest," Morwick said. "But here she's surrounded by a lot of fast people, and she has a great attitude and is very mature and together for a freshman."

According to Morwick, Bloom's most impressive race this season was the 4x200 relay at last month's Div. III New England Championships. Running anchor, Bloom received the baton in fifth place, considerably behind the next team. 200 meters later, though, the Jumbos walked away with third.

"Rachel ran a 25.4 split and out-leaned the other girl at the line," Morwick explained. "To be a freshman and to do that at a really important meet is unbelievable."

Bloom also ran on the winning 4x400 relay that day, and earned fifth in both the 55 and 200, thus contributing 24 points to Tufts' second place finish.

Showing early success in both individual events and relays, Bloom promises an exciting future with the Jumbos. Undoubtedly, the competitive nature praised by Morwick will be present when Bloom races the 4x400 tomorrow.

"I don't know what happens to her in relays," said Morwick. "But she is a monster."