TicketsFeb. 8, 2010
Each week of competition, University of Cincinnati head women's track and field coach Susan Seaton and head men's track and field coach Bill Schnier take a look back at the performances from the previous week. Coach Seaton comments about the women's team, while coach Schnier talks about the men's squad in their weekly Beartracks. This past week, only the women's team competed at the 2010 New Balance Invitational. Here is head coach Susan Seaton's reaction to the 2010 New Balance Invitational held Feb. 5-6 in New York City.
lady beartracks
For the first time ever the University of Cincinnati Women's Track & Field team competed at the prestigious New Balance Colligate Invitational in New York City. W e traveled to New York to measure ourselves against the nation's best and to gain valuable experience. With five Top 5 finishes and an additional nine top 10 finishes we certainly gave notice that Cincinnati was in the house and held our own in a star-studded field of competitors.
The highest finish of the meet came as a third place by Stefanie Ponte in the open pole vault. Stefanie jumped with courage and desire, establishing a new personal-best, which also ranks her sixth all-time in UC's record book. Turning in a fourth place finish in the open 60m dash was Natasha Burse. Natasha is still searching for the perfect race this season and hopes that with some fine tuning and rest she will break her own school record in two weeks at the conference meet. The Distance Medley Relay is not an event we run very often, but on this occasion we put our best food forward and ran the third best time in school history. The quartet of Jenna Heaton, Aricka Rhodes, Kathy Klump and Tamara Masters finished fifth in the open section and showed that we can compete in this seldom run relay. UC standout Jasmine Cotten finished in fifth place in the championship section of the high jump, 10th place in the championship long jump and also had a good showing in the hurdles. Although the meet did not bring additional school records and PR's for her, UC's newly crowned 2009-10 Institutional Scholar Athlete showed that she can always turn in a solid performance. Rounding out our Top 5 finishes, team captain Ashley Arnold ran a very fine race in the open 400m, winning her heat in a season best 56.49s, leading the race from start to finish. Ashley looked like her old self and is returning back to form just in time for the BIG EAST Championships.
The 3000m run saw a strong showing by our UC threesome of Jocelyn McCauley, Lilian Jelimo and Tamara Masters. Running the first event of the day they were surprised to find that the race was going off 20 minutes early and although they did not get time to finish their warm up, they all ran seasonal bests. Jocelyn had the best race of her season and ran an indoor PR to finish in seventh place in her section of the 3000m. Feeling strong throughout her race, this senior transfer from Brigham Young University is now ranked eighth on our all-time list and looks ready to make a splash in conference competition in two weeks.
The 4x4 relay took advantage of the fast track and turned in a seasonal-best performance. Shanay Portis, Ashley Arnold, Jenna Heaton and Aricka Rhodes ran solid relay legs and showed promise for a sub 3:50 time at the conference meet. Freshman Shanay Portis also performed well in the open long jump and 200m, achieving PR's in both. Jenna Heaton is continuing her efforts to break the 2:13 mark in the 800m and with a gutsy race turned in another PR. She also ran on both relays and proved that she is a major team player. Also running on both relays was Aricka Rhodes who had a fine weekend in New York. For the second week in a row, she broke 56s in the open 400 meter dash. She then came back to split a 55.4 on the DMR and followed that up the next day anchoring our heat winning 4x4.
Even though we held our own against the nation's best this meet clearly showed that we have work to do if we want to become a Top 30 national team. It was important for our athletes to see the level of focus and competitiveness that college's top track & field athletes displayed. Now we need to model our efforts more towards excellence and every-day commitment if we want to reach that next level.
With 18 qualified athletes for the BIG EAST Championships we now go into a rest period that will allow us to make final adjustments and to tapper for our upcoming team season finale. We are looking forward to a weekend without competition that should provide the rest needed to be on top of our game when we face our BIG EAST Conference foes at the BIG EAST Indoor Championship on February 20-21 back in the Armory in New York City.