The Jumbos' relay teams, which have played a major role in the team's success this season, grabbed the spotlight again at this weekend's ECAC Championships at Wesleyan.
When it was all said and done, relay teams scored 18 of the 30 points Tufts earned in the meet and keyed the Jumbos' seventh-place showing at the tournament.
Tufts' lone first-place finish came on Friday courtesy of the 4x200-meter relay team, when sophomores Aubrey Wasser and Halsey Stebbins, senior Jessica Mactas and freshman Andrea Ferri edged the squad from Brockport State to pick up 10 points.
"We were really excited about the four-by-two, especially because we were seeded fourth and there were some really fast teams in there" coach Kristen Morwick said. "They ran great. They all ran their best splits of the season. Andrea managed to chase down the leader with about 30 meters left in the race, so it was really exciting."
"The highlight was the four-by-two[win], which they weren't expecting," senior tri-captain Maggie Clary added. "It was a surprise, so that was really exciting and just testifies to the fact that our short springs have improved a huge amount this season."
The next day, the 4x400 team, which ran its fastest time of the season at the Feb. 23-24 Open New England Championships, notched another solid outing, as the group of senior tri-captain Sarah Crispin, junior Kaleigh Fitzpatrick, sophomore Jackie Ferry, and Andrea Ferri picked up eight points in a second-place finish.
"We were obviously expecting a win," Morwick said. "But it was still a really strong run."
Crispin's showing at the 4x400 was just one of two second-place finishes she posted on Saturday. The 800-meter run came down to a race between Crispin and Keene State's junior Sarah Miller, before the Owls' junior pulled away and won by 0.12 seconds.
One of the disappointments from Saturday's runs was in the 200-meter dash, where freshman Logan Crane finished just 0.02 seconds behind Washington and Jefferson junior Lauren Weinheimer for eighth place, narrowly missing out on a chance to earn a point for the team.
For Crane, the 200-meter was the second of two nail-biting ninth-place finishes on the weekend. The other came in Friday's 55-meter preliminary, where her time of 7.41 seconds cost her an opportunity to race in the finals.
"Logan just missed the final in the 55, and it was kind of heartbreaking because she was taking a shot at Nationals," Morwick said. "It was kind of tough that she finished one place away from scoring in both her events. But she's just a freshman, and she's only going to get better."
The 4x200 team's victory highlighted a strong effort on the opening day of the tournament, which saw the team earn 14 points despite competing in just three events. The Jumbos' other four points on Friday came from sophomore Paula Dormon, who entered ECACs seeded eighth in the shot put but earned a fifth-place finish with a throw of 40'4", her best of the season.
Most importantly, however, the ECAC Championships provided an opportunity for Morwick to rest some of her top runners, including juniors Cat Beck and Katy O'Brien, before next weekend's NCAA Championships at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. Both competed in last year's Nationals as part of a distance medley team that finished in 10th place. O'Brien also ran in the 800-meter qualifier, but her time of 2:17.77 did not earn her a trip to the finals. Beck, meanwhile, finished 13th in the 5000-meter.
But for those athletes who did compete in ECACs, it was one final chance to prepare for Nationals.
"It's a nice tune-up for the people who are going to race next weekend," Morwick said. "Sarah [Crispin] will run a longer event but [ECACs] will give her confidence in her speed. Kaleigh [Fitzpatrick is] ready to run real fast, too. We just have to keep them well-rested and healthy for six more days."
-Carly Helfand contributed reporting to this article.
