Women Defend New England Division III Championship Title

February 19-20, 2016

The Women's Track & Field team traveled to Middlebury College this weekend with plans of defending their New England Division III Championship.  However, Williams College was seeded ahead by two points and intended on preventing MIT from succeeding in their quest. As so many of these championships have gone in the past, once again MIT and Williams would be doing battle.

The first event, the Pentathlon, was on Friday.  Natalie Alper '17 was taking on the Pentathlon this year, adding it to her High Jump and Long Jump repertoire.  Seeded fifth, Tech was hoping for a little more.  Still learning the 60HH and Shot Put, Alper balanced those low performances with a personal best of 5-5 1/4 in the High Jump portion of the event and then ran a 2:25.90 800 to go from sixth to fourth, giving MIT five points.

On Saturday the first events were the Long Jump, Weight Throw and Pole Vault.  The Engineers were seeded to score six in the Long Jump, 10 in the Weight Throw and 20 in the Pole Vault, while Williams was supposed to only score in the Long Jump.  However, they were seeded second and third for 14 points.  After fouling her first two efforts, Nneoma Okonkwo '18 jumped 17-8 3/4 to tie the MIT record and move into third place overall.  Hannah Chen '18 had jumped a PR of 17-5 1/2 on her second jump to move into fifth place.  The Williams jumpers managed fifth and seventh place performances, pushing Chen back to sixth, but the 11 point swing was huge, and set the tone for what was to come. 

The Weight Throw was alive with energy from the MIT throwers.  Jackie Vahey '17, seeded second, would have no part of settling for second, taking the lead on her second throw and keeping it, throwing a huge PR of 54-8 1/4 on her final throw.  Ariela Slutsky '18, seeded seventh, finished sixth with a personal best of 50-3 1/4 to put MIT up three more points from their seeds.

It would not have been realistic to do better than 20 points in the Pole Vault, and to just get close would be big for the Engineers.  Cimmy Virdi '16, nursing a quadriceps issue, came in at 11-11 3/4, a height that only had one remaining competitor in the field. Both cleared, although Virdi did so on her first attempt.  After clearing 12-5 1/2 to win the event, she made some attempts at 13-7, but did not succeed.  Sherry Wan '16 and Jen Tylock '17 both cleared 10-11 3/4 to finish in a three-way tie for fifth, giving MIT a total of 16 points in the event. 

Overall, MIT was plus three points and leading by a score of 43 to 6 over Williams.  Regardless how many points your team is predicted to score, when faced with a 43-6 deficit it is difficult to bring the right attitude.  Williams College tried but could just not get it going.

With the start of the running events, Williams was hoping to bring that momentum in their favor.  MIT was seeded first in the event, but that was with a much different quartet, and Williams has much more depth than MIT.  Megan Montgomery '19 led off with the 1200 for Tech.  She ran a fine 3:46.2, but was passed by the Williams runner in the final lap, finishing about 15 meters behind.  Kendra Knittel '17 took the baton for the 400 leg, ran a solid 61.7 and held onto second place, but finished about 20 meters behind Williams.  Clemmie Mitchell '18, running her first ever 800 leg, raced well, splitting 2:26.1.  Mitchell was passed by Middlebury, but finished only about 10 meters behind both Middlebury and Williams, giving Nicole Zeinstra '16 a fighting chance.  Zeinstra made up the gap by 300 meters as she split 75 for the first 400.  The pace stayed quick as she ran 2:31 at the 800 and 3:47 for 1200 to stay with the two front runners.  Middlebury kicked at this point.  Zeinstra made an attempt and then changed her mind.  With just over 200 meters to go Zeinstra pulled ahead of Williams, opening up a gap as she ran 74 for the final 400 to finish in 5:01.8, giving MIT second in 12:14.85.  This made the score 51 to 12.

The next final was the 5K. Mary Eccles '18 was representing MIT in the fast section, seeded fifth.  The Williams runner was seeded seventh.  The determined pace for Eccles was 82-83 seconds per quarter.  The opening mile was not quite at that pace as the leaders, including Eccles passed through at 5:34.  Eccles took the lead for a good bit of the second mile, but failed to pick up the pace, running the second mile in 5:41.  Eccles was now running 87 pace and not at all looking like herself, though racing to the best of her ability.  When the leaders made their move to win, Eccles could not respond.  Her early pace had broken most of the field, which meant that even at 89 pace no one was passing her.  She finished fourth in 17:48.37.  The Williams runner placed second to give them their first positive result, making the score 56 to 20.

The Mile was next, which pitted Maryann Gong '17 against many of the top milers in the country.  Gong abandoned her normal "take it out" strategy, instead choosing to let others set up the race.  This worked well as the pace was honest through a 3:46 1200.  With 250 meters to go, Gong sprinted past a Williams runner to take the lead, holding that lead to a 4:56.15 victory.  Gong had been seeded first, with Williams seeded second and third.  However, Williams only secured third place in the race, losing eight valuable points and putting MIT up 66 to 26.

In the Shot Put, the MIT throwers were continuing their dominance.  Isabella Stuopis '16 gave it her best and finished third at 42-2 1/4.  Vahey had a very nice fourth place finish at 39-10 and just missed a big one on her last attempt.  The big surprise was Slutsky throwing a two foot plus PR of 39-8 1/2 to sneak in a big sixth place, giving MIT 14 more points and putting Tech up 80 to 26.

Williams was hoping for big points from the High Jump and Triple Jump.  This was sort of the last chance for them to make a comeback, but it was not to be.  Seeded to score 16 points to MIT's three in the High Jump, Katherine Prutz '18 came through with a PR of 5-2 1/4 on her first attempt to earn a tie for fifth place and Alper secured seventh place for 5.5 points to Williams 12 points.  Seeded to score 10 in the Triple Jump, Williams finished fourth and fifth for nine points.  The score was now 85.5 to 47.

Back on the track, Hannah Chen had earned a spot in the 60HH Final.  She hit the first hurdle hard, was out of sync the  remainder of the race, finishing seventh in 9.38.  Williams, only seeded to place sixth, earned third place.  Chen came right back in the 400 to place fifth in 59.51 out of lane one, a very difficult feat.

In the 60 Meter Dash Final, Okonkwo had qualified out of the trials with a personal best of 7.89.  With a much better start in the final, she finished in a new MIT record of 7.85 to place seventh, less than a tenth of a second out of third.

Williams had a runner who was seeded first in the 800, but she had already placed third in the Mile, while Bailey Tregoning '19 was fresh as the number two seed.  At the start, a senior from Springfield who had only run a previous best of 2:18 took the pace out hard in 31.  Tregoning was out well at 33 and along with a runner from Wheaton, was well ahead of the rest of the field.  At 66 for the 400, Tregoning was still well behind the Springfield runner who came through in 63 seconds.  Tregoning added a 34 200 to come through in 1:41, but could not close on the Springfield runner.  Moving into second with 200 to go, Tregoning finished in 2:16.18 to match her seed.  The Williams runner fell back to seventh, pretty much sealing the outcome of the meet.

Gong was back in the 1000, seeded fifth, going up against the undefeated Isabella Franz '17 from Connecticut College.  Gong settled in behind the front running Franz who hit the 400 in 71 and 800 in 2:22.  Gong tried to take the lead in the final 200 but just could not do so, finishing in second in 2:57.12, to Franz's 2:56.56.

In the 200, Chen was back and this time had a favorable lane.  She placed third in the seeded section in 25.99, but was beaten by two others from other sections, to give her fifth place overall.  The sophomore earned 13 points for Tech.

Perhaps the best race of the day for MIT was the 3K.  Zeinstra returned from her mile leg of the DMR, to see if she could ice the meet for MIT. Continuing to stay ahead by about 40 points, with Williams having the top two seeds in the 3K, Zeinstra, seeded 12th, wanted to keep Williams at bay.  The pace was consistent, but neither very fast, nor slow, running 82's for a 5:28 first mile.  Zeinstra led a breakaway of three with laps to go, but with two remaining the Middlebury runner upped the pace to open a 10 meter lead.  Zeinstra fell back to third and had seemingly given up, falling behind by over 15 meters.  Then with just over 100 meters to go she took off, moved into second place with 60 to go and took the lead 10 meters from the finish to win in 10:08.10.

MIT backed off the 4x400 Relay and pulled their 4x800 Relay, which had a strong chance of winning.  The final score was MIT 123.5, Williams 93.83 and host Middlebury with 82 points.  In all, 30 teams scored in the meet.

Next weekend, with the NEICAAA Championship at BU, a New England Championship featuring Divisions I, II and III teams in New England, MIT will mostly rest, but will compete a few of those with a chance to qualify for the NCAA Division III Championship in three weeks. 

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