The women's 4x400 relay team may be getting a sense of d?©j? vu as it heads into competition at this weekend's ECAC Championships, held at Wesleyan University.
The foursome, consisting of senior tri-captain Sarah Crispin, junior Kaleigh Fitzpatrick, sophomore Jackie Ferry and freshman Andrea Ferri, hit its fastest time as a group, 3:57.30, last weekend at the 2007 All New England Championships. The mark left the Jumbos at 11th place in the country, but only the top 10 teams will advance to this year's NCAA Championships, held March 9 and 10 at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind.
Luckily for the Jumbos, they will have one last chance to secure a spot among the nation's most elite relay teams.
"The meet has qualifying standards," junior Cat Beck said. "It's another opportunity for people who are feeling good off of this past week to go out and get some [personal records] and for some people to aim for national qualifiers."
The 4x400 runners can only hope that history repeats itself. Last year the 4x400 team of Fitzpatrick, Ferry, junior Joyce Uang and then-senior tri-captain Rachel Bloom found itself in a similar situation. Ranked in 11th place and looking to qualify for Nationals at the Trinity Last Chance Meet at Yale, Tufts won the race with a time of 3.57.37 - good for the 10th and a final entry slot.
The Jumbos will have to go a little bit faster this time around, but they feel confident coming off their best performance on Saturday.
"That's our fastest time this season," Fitzpatrick said. "We're going to run it again this weekend. We're hoping to qualify for Nationals, and I think we have a good chance of doing that. Everyone is really excited for it, and we all feel like we're pretty competitive. We all trust each other and have faith in each other, and I think it's a really good group to run with. Hopefully we can just pull it all together next weekend and then head off to Indiana."
In addition to the relay team, a few additional members of the Jumbo squad are still hoping to qualify for Nationals individually as they race against schools from all over New England.
"She doesn't need to, but Sarah Crispin may run the 800," coach Kristen Morwick said. "We think she can make a National qualifier. Also [freshman] Logan Crane in the 55 and [sophomore] Paula Dormon in the shot put both have a shot to do it if they have really good days."
Crane, who has been coping with muscle pain in her leg on-and-off this year, competed in the preliminaries at All-New Englands last weekend before being pulled from competition.
"We just wanted to try her in the 55 and see how fresh her legs were," Morwick said. "She was still sore from the weekend before and still really tight at race time, and we couldn't get her going. I'm hoping that the rest will pay off like it did for New Englands."
Some of the team's top runners who have already qualified for the NCAA Championships, including Beck, will be sitting out this weekend as they gear up for the season's culminating event.
"We're only bringing 15 kids, so we're resting a bunch of people," Morwick said. "It's more just a last meet for the people that this is as far as they've qualified and last chance for people to try to qualify for Nationals. It's low key in that sense.
"A lot of people opted not to run this meet," she continued. "Especially for the distance runners, it's really hard to do 25 laps indoors a bunch of times in a row. We have people who qualified who are just not going to run."
