Jumbos to send Bowman, DeBari to nationals

Junior Annalisa DeBari punched her ticket to the NCAA Div. III Indoor Championships over the weekend as she ran a personal record of 8.85 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles at the Tufts Final Qualifying meet. The time improvement of 0.21 seconds was enough to boost her from No. 36 in the nation heading into the meet to No. 8 heading into this weekend. DeBari joins her teammate junior Brittany Bowman, ranked No. 13 in the 5,000-meter, as the only two Tufts representatives who will be heading to nationals in Naperville, Ill.

The distance medley relay team looked to be on pace to break the 12:00 mark, which would have put them in a great position to potentially qualify for nationals as well. However, after a great opening 1,200-meter leg by senior quad-captain mid-distance runner Sam Cox, fellow senior quad-captain sprinter/hurdler Rita Donohoe had started strong in her 400-meter leg when unfortunately she tripped and fell down hard on the track. Donohoe suffered a broken nose and a slight concussion. Coach Kristen Morwick decided to pull the Tufts relay from the race following Donohoe’s fall, thinking that giving Bowman more rest was more important than finishing the race.

Now, the focus of the coaches and the team has shifted to preparing Bowman and DeBari for their races at nationals, where both will be competing for the first time. Bowman explained how her and DeBari’s training will be much more focused with time for rest this week in order to get them in the best possible shape before this weekend.

“For [me and DeBari], it’s definitely a recovering rest week, I’ve decreased my mileage and my workouts aren’t as intense. In fact, I only have one workout this week, and I’ll just be practicing my 5k pace. So it won’t be anything taxing.” Bowman said. “A lot of it this week is just mental because after all the work we’ve done for the past few months, it’s all mental now.”

Bowman competed in a national championship meet during the cross country season, and she believes that experience will help her determine a good strategy for the weekend.

“I think that it will help me having experienced cross country nationals because while I’ve never run an indoor race for nationals, I’m guessing people will just be running it for place, people won’t be concerned about their times.” Bowman said. “When people are running for place, the easiest way to run is to run behind someone ... I’m hoping there will be a nice pack that I’ll be able to be in the midst of and let them do the work for the first couple miles. Then the hope would be that I would make a move in the last mile of the race.”

Both runners will be looking to break into the top eight in their respective events to earn All-American honors. Morwick described the team’s hopes for the runners and the importance that they treat this meet the same as any other they have run.

“For this weekend, we are hoping [Bowman] and [DeBari] can do what they did to qualify," Morwick said. "If they do that, they have a great shot at top eight/All-American. We are trying to keep this week as normal as possible and just remind our athletes that it’s just another meet, and they do not need to be superhuman to be successful.”

Tufts sent three runners to this race last year, with one competing in the 60-meter hurdles, one competing in the 60-meter sprint and one competing in the mile run. Tufts captains Sydney Smith (LA '16) and Alexis Harrison (LA '16) both qualified for the finals of their events in the mile and 60-meter sprint respectively, while captain Marilyn Allen (LA '16) missed qualifying for finals by 0.03 seconds.Harrison went on to take second overall in the 60-meters and Smith took eighth place in the mile.

The Jumbos this year hope to repeat that success and will kick things off with DeBari running in the 60-meter hurdles prelim on Friday.