Track and field makes their mark at two meets
The Saint Joseph’s University men’s and women’s track and field teams each participated in two events last Saturday – the Collegeville Classic and the Penn 8 Team Select.
The women’s squad finished seventh of 19 teams at the Collegeville Classic, which took place at Ursinus College. Meanwhile, at the Penn 8 Team Select in Staten Island, N.Y., which was considered the ‘A’ meet, the women finished sixth of eight teams.
“We had some breakthrough performances at both meets, which was really nice to see,” Coach Melody O’Reilly said.
Freshman Emily Bracken and junior Caroline Keegan placed 13th and 19th, respectively, in the mile in Staten Island at the Penn 8 Team Select. Bracken finished in 5:10.83 seconds, while Keegan finished just a few seconds behind.
“We had a couple of athletes who are trying new events,” O’Reilly said. “One of which is junior Caroline Keegan and she ran her first collegiate mile [Saturday night] and actually had a very respectable time – she ran 5:16. So that was just really fun to see her do that, to see her come through, because she’s been kind of struggling a little bit with her other events, so I think she found a new one.”
Freshman Emily Clayton placed sixth in the 60 hurdles in Collegeville with a 9.65 second time after qualifying in the preliminaries.
“[Clayton] has been a wonderful addition to the program,” O’Reilly said. “She’s a freshman and she’s attempting to start to dabble in the pentathlon a little bit, so it was really nice to see her break-through in the hurdles like that because it’s not something she’s been completely focused on. She was a true competitor yesterday [Jan. 21].”
In addition to the 60 hurdles, a pentathlon would consist of the high jump, shot put, long jump and 800 meter. Clayton also participated in the shot put and long jump events at the Collegeville Classic.
The men’s team placed 11th of 19 teams in Collegeville and 4th of seven teams in Staten Island.
At the Collegeville Classic, sophomore Sean Princivalle won the 5000 meter. It was his first race of this kind of the season and he finished in 15:52.97 seconds. Princivalle’s personal record for this event was set last winter at Ursinus as well.
Other notable performances for the men’s team include sophomore Alec Arena’s third place finish in the high jump and junior Jake Durante-Koller’s eighth place finish in the 3000 meter.
Both teams will travel to Penn State University this weekend, Jan. 27-28, to partake in the Penn State National Invitational.
“Penn State is a meet where they have to run a certain standard to be invited to it, so we will have a much smaller squad going out there,” O’Reilly said. “I estimate we’ll take about fifteen of our athletes out there. We’ll just look for more PR’s [personal records] and just getting faster as we head towards the A-10’s.”
