Jumbos head to All-New England's with personal goals in mind

Last Saturday's second place Division III New England Championship finish was all about the team. Today, it's all about the individual.

The team heads to Boston University for the two-day All-New England Championship Meet with the goal to make individual improvements and meet qualification times for Nationals.

"We're going to try to hit some better qualifiers," coach Kristen Morwick said. "Last week was a big team meet, [but] that's it for us this season as a team. We won't shoot for a team score in the next two meets. If it happens, great, but we're not going to strategize. [It's more about] individual goals, looking for better qualifiers, and a few people have specific things like school records in mind."

Despite a number of athletes that qualified for more than one All-New England event, the team will be taking a more reserved approach to the meet due to the competitive nature of last Saturday's event. Several people are being held out of competition today and tomorrow.

Fourteen athletes will represent Tufts in 13 events, shooting for personal bests and some national qualifications, with just two meets left for an opportunity to make a national time. Trials and field events are held today, while finals take place tomorrow.

The distance medley relay team of senior quad-captain Lauren Caputo, freshman Sarah Crispin and sophomores Rebecca Ades and Megan Sears will be chasing a national qualification today. The DMR team narrowly missed provisional national qualification by one second two weekends ago at the BU-hosted St. Valentine Invitational, finishing in 12:21.23.

Caputo and Ades will also run the open mile event on Saturday, even though both qualified for All-New England's in other events, Ades in the 1500 and Caputo in the 1500, 3000 and 5000.

Senior quad-captain Jess Trombly, seeded fifth at BU in the 55 hurdles with a national provisional time of 8.44 seconds, will look to improve her national seeding, which currently also stands at fifth. Trombly (26.33 seconds) will also run the 200 alongside sophomore teammate Rachel Bloom (26.24), with the pair trying to break the 26-second mark.

"We've got Trombo in the hurdles trying to give her an experience that might be like [that at] nationals," Morwick said of Trombly. "She generally doesn't run with much competition in that race [in Division III competition]."

Trombly and Bloom will join junior Sika Henry and senior quad-captain Emily Bersin in what will likely be the final run of the nation's top Division III 4x400 team before the NCAA's on March 12-13 at the University of Wisconsin. The group will shoot for an automatic national qualifying time, which they currently sit 0.18 seconds short of with a Tufts record of 3:53.94.

Morwick hopes this weekend's competition and the fast nature of the BU track can push the team to a faster time She will probably rest the quartet at next week's ECAC Championships at Bowdoin and run an alternate team..

Bersin (1:00.00) will also run the 400, trying to break 60 seconds, while freshman Kate Makai will compete in the 500 (1:21.53). Classmate Samantha Moland (3:07.07) will race in the 1000 meters.

"There's going to be some good competition," Moland said. "I'd like to run a PR, just get a chance to get out there and run some fast times."

Senior Lauren Dunn will fill out the running events, searching for a career best in the 3000. Dunn enters the race with a 10:44.98 time this season and has recorded PR's in each of the last four weeks in various events. She will look to continue that success tomorrow. "It will be very competitive," Dunn said. "I'll be trying to get another personal record. There are very few girls who'll have a chance to go to nationals, so it's more about personal goals."

Four athletes will represent Tufts in the field. Henry will feature in high jump, seeded ninth with a 5-05.25-foot mark. Senior Jess Gauthier (44-04.00 feet) will aim for the school record and an ECAC mark in the weight throw, while classmate Gwen Campbell (37-00.25) will be the lone Jumbo in the shot put, also targeting ECAC's. Senior Shushanna Mignott (34-10.25) shoots for an ECAC-qualifier in triple jump to go with her ECAC long jump mark recorded last week.

Tufts placed 17th out of 27 schools at last year's All-New England's. Now, with the team focused largely on individual efforts, it can reflect on what it accomplished earlier on this year.

"It's been a good experience," Dunn said of the team's indoor season. "There are a lot of awesome freshmen who I trained with during cross-country season, and have run really fast times. It's been great to watch."