BY Will Penney
A&E Editor
Records were broken and Eastern College Athletic Conference-qualifying times were met by both the men and women of the UR track teams this past weekend at the Boston University Terrier Invitational.
On Friday, junior Hillary Snyder broke the school record in the 1,000-meter run — her time of 3:00.20 earned her fifth place overall and easily qualified her for the ECAC Championships. Snyder beat out the previous school record, set over 20 years ago by Josefa Benzoni, by two-tenths of a second. Snyder was also the second collegiate athlete to cross the finish line.
The men’s distance medley relay team snagged an ECAC-qualifying time on Friday as well. The team, comprised of seniors A.J. Lee and Frank Ramirez and juniors Andrew Fleisher and Nick Chisholm, beat the qualifying time by over 19 seconds and finished ninth overall with a time of 10:18.66.
The men and women in yellow and blue reeled in 11 ECAC qualifying performances throughout the two-day invitational, with the men earning five spots and the women six. Fleisher was one of the first to do so, with an impressive time of 4:18.75 in the one-mile run. Fleisher’s finish nabbed him 41st place out of 124 runners.
Senior Brian Lang ran his way to 40th place out of 111 with a final 5,000-meter time of 15:06.91 to complete the strong distance showing at the meet. Senior Justin Lyttleton grabbed another ECAC spot with his time of 22.80 in the 200-meter dash — Chisholm was less than half a second behind, but did not qualify. The two placed 40th and 68th respectively. The final performance that met ECAC criteria was the 4×400-meter relay of Chisholm, Lee, Lyttleton, and junior Ryan Miller, who ran a time of 3:23.34 to finish 18th overall.
The women’s track team also raked in a myriad of stunning performances. In the 800-meter race, senior Jackie Cinella ran 2:17.63 to earn her 12th place and qualify her for the ECAC meet.
Classmate and ECAC-qualifier Casey Green took 40th place in the 200-meter run, finishing in 26.78. Sophomore Claire Crowther followed suit with her performance in the 500-meter sprint. Her ECAC-worthy time of 1:19.02 earned her 13th place out of 46 runners.
Perhaps most impressively, junior Lauren Norton earned a spot at ECACs 1-mile run despite falling into the infield with less than 400 meters to go. Norton was running a remarkable time through 1200 meters- her pace was on par with the NCAA provisional qualifying time- when she was tripped and fell. Norton picked herself up and still managed to cross the line with a time of 5:16.40.
The final qualifying performance of the day went to the women’s 4×400 relay, comprised of Cinella, Green, Crowether, and freshman Abby Zabrodsky. The four finished 13th overall with a time of 4:03.57.
Penney is a member of the class of 2012.
