Winter freeze doesn't slow Jumbos

The women's indoor track and field team showed relatively few negative side effects from the bitter winter this weekend, hosting the second of four home meets at the Gantcher Center on Saturday. In the non-team-scoring event, the Jumbos third official winter meet, Tufts qualified provisionally for Nationals in two events, while adding several other championship qualifications.

"This is the first week we haven't been doing double [training sessions], and they're tired, they're just getting back into the flow of things and we're still in our high training volume," Coach Kristen Morwick said. "It's usually slow-going the first few meets, so given those factors, I guess the fact that we have some people performing well is great."

Senior quad-captain Jess Trombly led the way with provisional national qualifications in the 55 meter hurdles (8.64 seconds) and the 400m dash (58.67). Sophomore standout Rachel Bloom (59.90) finished close behind in the 400, joining Trombly as the only two women in a field of 30 to run the event in under a minute. Bloom qualified for the All-New England's, which features Div. I, II and III competitors, with her result.

"I think it's best for us to run it together, we push each other up," Bloom said. "It was good for me to have [Trombly] in it. I practice with her and I'm used to running behind her. I know she's going to pick [up the pace] at a certain place."

Senior quad-captain Lauren Caputo finished second in the 5000 in a time of 18:18.26, just under four seconds behind Trinity's Kristina Depeau (18:14.82) and three seconds clear of Bates' Julie Dutton to also gain All-New England's qualification. The Jumbos' 4x400 relay team (4:03.28) ran strongly as well, finishing just behind UMass (4:02.58).

"We didn't qualify for Nationals yet [in the relay] but we didn't have our real team on yet," Bloom, who ran in the 4x400, said. "We play around with it until it gets close to the championship meets, and then we put our real teams together."

The race of the meet, according to Morwick, was the 1000. Freshman Sarah Crispin, running the race for the first time in her college career, battled back and forth for the lead with Amherst senior tri-captain Alyson Venti, eventually squeaking past the Lady Jeffs' runner to claim first place by .30 seconds (3:04.88).

"She had never really run it before, but the girl from Amherst, who's an All-American in cross country, took a huge lead at the beginning of the race, and Crispy came back and nipped her at the line," Morwick said. "It was awesome. It was a great performance, really exciting."

Crispin also won the 1500 event two Saturdays ago with a time of 4:54.37. Crispin's 1000 time was good enough to qualify her for All-New England's.

"I didn't really know what to expect," Crispin said. "But I went out at the pace I'd discussed with the coaches, and I just stuck with [Venti]. I ran indoor track in high school but I didn't take it too seriously. This is my first time training properly, and so far I'm happy with it."

Over winter break, the Jumbos opened their home indoor season in style, hosting and easily winning the Tufts Invitational against five other New England schools on January 17. Tufts scored 381.5 points, dominating the field in sheer numbers--Tufts entered 35 athletes, just over half of its squad--to finish 277.5 points ahead of runner-up Keene State (104). Worcester State (28), Salem State (26), Fitchburg State (25.5) and Emmanuel College (13) rounded out the competition.

Junior Sika Henry highlighted the meet in high jump with Tufts' first national provisional qualification of the season, winning the event by 16 centimeters with a jump of 1.66 meters (5 feet, 5 1/4 inches). It was the second-best women's high jump mark in Tufts history.

Trombly put on a display of her own, cleaning up in the 55 meter hurdles (8.70 seconds), the 200 dash (26.35) and the long jump (5.00 meters), while finishing fourth in high jump and sixth in shot put to collect 37.5 points for the team.

She was joined in the shot put by classmate Jess Gauthier (11.19m), who won the event over teammates senior Gwen Campbell (10.95) and junior Katie Antle (10.83). Gauthier also took first place in the weight throw.

While the season is still young, Morwick is happy with the team's success so far. The team returned from winter break one and a half weeks ago in various stages of training, which while still being fine-tuned, is beginning to come together.

"It's a little slow going right now because we've had over a month off from training," Morwick said. "Given that, I think people came back in decent shape and our returners more than anything are doing really well because they know how to prepare themselves when they're home over break. Some of the freshmen are just not there yet. But for the most part we're doing pretty well for this time of the year."