Women's Track and Field | Tufts cruises to first-place finish

    Unlike most sports, track and field emphasizes the performance of the individual, not the team, during the regular season, as qualifying athletes for New Englands and NCAAs are the main objectives. Still, when a school hosts a meet, it's nice to be able to protect that home-gym advantage and register a win.
    That's exactly what the women's track and field team did this weekend, finishing first out of 10 teams at the second of three Tufts Invitationals this year. After placing second out of nine at its first home meet, Tufts racked up 245 points, almost 100 more than second-place Amherst (153), and won eight of 20 events on the day en route to its victory.
    "It was exciting," senior tri-captain Jackie Ferry said. "It's always good to get the win, and most of us performed well so that was great to see, especially at this point in the season. We want to perform to our potential more because Div. III Championships are coming up, so a win is always great."
    "I'm very proud of the team," junior Logan Crane said. "It's always great to have a win. It builds a lot of confidence."
    Sophomore Steph McNamara, an All-American in cross country during the fall cross country season, won both of her events and qualified provisionally for NCAAs in the mile. She first pulled out a closely contested 1,000-meter run, finishing in 3:00.60 to narrowly edge out Trinity senior Allie Lemire by just over one second. McNamara then finished the mile in 4:57.44 to beat out the next-closest competitor by over 20 seconds, with her time well within the NCAA provisional mark of 5:05. The sophomore adds her NCAA provisional time in the mile to her earlier qualifying performance in the 5k.
    Sophomore Amy Wilfert then capped Tufts' dominance in the long-distance events, as her time of 10:20.59 in the 3k run was not only good for first but was more than 20 seconds ahead of second-place finisher Ravenna Neville, a junior from Wesleyan.
    Freshman Nakeisha Jones also put together a strong day, winning both the high jump and the 55-meter hurdles. Her height of 1.58 meters was almost two inches higher than that of senior Lara Dalidowitz of Springfield, while in the hurdles, she dominated both her first heat and the finals. Jones registered the best time in preliminaries with a 9.17-second mark and subsequently surpassed it in the finals with an 8.97 finish. Her finals time was almost half a second faster than the second-place finisher, junior Kiran Sheffrin of Wesleyan, who finished just half a second faster than the sixth-place finisher.
    In the 400-meter dash, Tufts finished one-two as senior Halsey Stebbins took first with a time of 1:00.96, followed by sophomore Andrea Caruth, who finished in 1:03.01, just 0.26 seconds ahead of the third-place finisher. Meanwhile, in the 600-meter run, Ferry continued her reliable ways by taking first with a 1:39.4 mark, a mere 0.2 seconds ahead of the next-closest competitor.
    "It was definitely my best race of the year," Ferry said. "It was exciting because I out-leaned one of the Wesleyan girls at the line. It was a great race; it was fun to win my first one this season."
    Crane also notched a solid day for Tufts, finishing second in the long jump and third in the 55-meter dash. Despite heading into finals with the fastest preliminary time, a technical error in the finals cost her a possible first-place finish.
    "I had an unfortunate mishap coming out of the starting blocks," Crane said. "I slipped off the block and it caused for a delayed reaction. I'm determined to practice and prepare myself so it doesn't happen again at Div. IIIs."
    Perhaps Tufts' strongest performances of the day came in the pole vault. The Jumbos swept the top three spots with freshman Katherine Tang, senior Jennifer Johnson and sophomore Allison Fechter all hitting the same mark of 2.82 meters, with Tang coming out on top.
    The Jumbos will host another meet this weekend before the team travels to BU on Feb. 13 and 14 for the Valentine Invitational.
    "Basically we're really trying to get qualifying marks down that we need to get for everyone to qualify for Div. IIIs," Ferry said. "For those who've already qualified, it's a chance to hopefully get a little faster or do a little better so we're really ready to go [at the NCAA Championship]."