Looking ahead to the NCAA Div. III Championships in two weeks, the women's track and field team's goal this weekend was to qualify as many athletes for Nationals as possible. That's exactly what the Tufts did on the banked track at Boston University this weekend, as several Jumbos qualified or improved their qualification times for Nationals en route to a tie for an 11th-place team finish at New England Open Championships.
The Jumbos were led by their distance medley relay (DMR) team, as the unit consisting of seniors senior Halsey Stebbins and co-captain Jackie Ferry and sophomores Amy Wilfert and Stephanie McNamara finished first among competition that included much larger Div. I and Div. II schools. The unit's time of 11:56.73 was one second ahead of the second-place University of New Hampshire (11:57.76) and represents a significant improvement over its previous NCAA provisional qualifying mark of 12:08.69.
"It was pretty important for the distance medley to try to improve our times so we would actually be able to go to Nationals," Ferry said. "I think that was the most important part of the meet for us and for a couple other people trying to qualify for Nationals as well. It's a great meet to do that at because BU has such a nice track."
"We were really happy with how we did; it's the third year we've won it in a row," McNamara added. "We were also really happy with our time. We were able to shave off 10 seconds or so, so that was really exciting. Probably, the best part is we still have room for improvement. We might run this weekend to try and better the time, but for now we're eighth in country with that time, so that's great."
Wilfert and McNamara also had successful days in their individual events. Wilfert improved upon her NCAA-qualifying mark in the mile run, coming in sixth with a time of 5:00.85, almost four seconds ahead of her previous mark (5:04.15) set at the New England Div. III Championships last week. Meanwhile, McNamara posted the highest individual finish for the Jumbos, taking third in the 3,000-meter run with a time of 9:57.50 — less than three tenths of a second behind second-place sophomore Emma Perron of Providence.
"I was happy with it," McNamara said. "It was a pretty big PR, and I was excited to break 10. Third place was pretty good for me, so I was happy."
The Jumbos also saw a strong showing from freshman Nakeisha Jones, who has made significant contributions to the team in her first year. Jones took fourth in the triple jump with a mark of 38'6'' in her event. That distance is just short of the NCAA automatic qualifier (38'6 3/4''), but Jones already holds the best mark in the country, having jumped 39'3'' at the BU Terrier Invitational on Jan. 23.
Junior Logan Crane was the final scorer for Tufts, coming in with a time of 7.35 seconds in the 55-meter dash for eighth place. She also ran a 25.60 in the 200-meter dash preliminaries, a time not good enough to qualify for finals in the event but still only one hundredth of a second off the school record set by Jessica Trombly (LA '04) in 2004.
"The 200-meter, I was really disappointed in," Crane said. "I was going for the school record, and obviously, I missed it again. And I was very disappointed in the 55 because I need to qualify for Nationals, and now I'm saving it for the last week, so it's really stressful. It makes training for this week really important."
The Jumbos will now look to the ECAC Div. III Championships, to be held at the Gantcher Center next weekend, with the NCAA Div. III Championships only one week after that.
"ECACs are a good meet to try and throw down one last time before Nationals — try to get that last qualifier in," McNamara said. "It's a last-chance meet. We're going to have some pretty good competition, but we'll be lucky to be hosting the meet, so we'll be on our home track. For [the DMR team], we're going to use it to get a better time and seed for Nationals. It should be good; we're looking forward to it."
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