With a record-breaking and NCAA-qualifying performance in the distance medley relay on Friday night, the Jumbo runners kick-started their successful campaign right from the opening whistle of the Open New England Championships held Friday and Saturday at Boston University.
The DMR team featured senior tri-captain Sarah Crispin and juniors Kaleigh Fitzpatrick, Katy O'Brien and Cat Beck, all of whom ran their personal bests in the event. The team combined for a mark of 11:39.08 that broke the meet record by over seven seconds and the school record by 20.
"It helps a lot when everyone has fresh legs," Fitzpatrick said. "We came into it really excited and felt really confident with the lineup, so it ended up being a great day. Sarah ran a great race. She's very consistent and such a fierce competitor.
"She handed it off to me and then it went to Katy, and she's also an awesome runner. She ran really well and then Cat Beck finished for us. She's so strong - to have her for the anchor leg on anything is really great because you know she'll kick as hard as she can when it comes down to it."
"The DMR was on Friday, so it was great to just get to this meet and know that we could just swing ourselves wholeheartedly into the relay and not have to worry about anything else that day," Beck said. "It was a really exciting race to be in."
A highly-competitive playing field complete with squads from several Div. I programs, including meet-winner UConn and 23rd-place finisher Boston College, also helped propel the runners.
"It's always fun to have people who are really good competitors there and to be able to race against them," O'Brien said. "It was definitely good to have those people in the DMR, especially in the first leg. Sarah Crispin had a lot of good people to run with, and she ran really well."
Each of the DMR runners returned to competition the next day. Beck led the group, placing second in the 3000-meter, joining Providence College's graduate student Aine Hoban in surpassing the meet record. With a time of 9:31.90, Beck also set a new Tufts record and improved her personal mark by over 20 seconds.
"Going into the 3k, I had my eye on the school record," Beck said. "I was trying to practice racing without hearing my splits every lap because at Nationals you're not able to do that. I just wanted to throw myself into the mix, and I knew that I had a lot of good competition, especially from Providence College. I tried to key off of those runners and just run the pace that I knew I could maintain."
"Every year she's been able to up her training, and she's stayed fairly injury free," coach Kristen Morwick said. "We've tried to give her every other weekend off so she doesn't get over-raced. She's really good about taking care of herself, and she's really, really talented and a hard worker. The combination of those things is totally paying off. She's a tough competitor and really smart racer. I think she's going to surprise people even more."
Along with teammates sophomore Jackie Ferry and freshman Andrea Ferri, Crispin and Fitzpatrick also saw success on Saturday with the 4x400 relay team, which sprinted to the group's fastest mark at 3:57.30.
"It was pretty much a three-second improvement," Morwick said. "We were working around with some order changes. We led off with Sarah Crispin just to try it, and we ran faster. That time puts us 11th in the nation, but they only take 10 teams. We'd like to get even just a second faster, but it's hard because we're trying to do it with a couple middle distance runners. Just finding the right combination of people and where they'll fit best in the relay is a challenge."
O'Brien turned in a solid performance as well, running a personal best and Nationals provisional qualifying time of 5:03.76 in the mile run.
"I was really just going out to get in a good workout and to get another race under my belt so that I could prepare for Nationals," O'Brien said.
Other record-setting performances included personal bests for senior Jessica Mactas in both the 55-meter and the 200-meter, a personal record and finals-qualifying time for junior Anna Shih in the 1000-meter, a personal best mark for Ferri in the 400-meter, personal records for Ferry and senior tri-captain Kate Makai in the 800-meter, and a season best in the mile for sophomore Susan Allegretti.
