Two Bates women’s track records fall at Open New Englands
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Izzy Alexander ’09 |
Katie Bash ’10 |
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Jen Caban ’07 |
Jenna Ligor ’10 |
BOSTON — Two school records fell for the Bates College women’s indoor track and field team Saturday at the all-division Open New England Championships at Boston University. Sophomore Izzy Alexander broke her own record in the indoor 500 meters for the second time in as many days, and the Bobcats also broke the 27-year-old school record in the 4×800 indoor relay.
A day after Alexander (Harvard, Mass.) shaved 2.04 seconds off of her own record in the 500 in the preliminary heats on Friday, Alexander took 0.80 more seconds off of the mark with a scorching time of 1:16.25, good for eighth place among runners in all divisions at the meet. Alexander was 0.10 seconds behind Natalee Pennicooke of Northeastern University for seventh place and 1.04 seconds ahead of UMass-Lowell’s Jessie Colby.
Bates also finished fifth in the 4×800 relay, ahead of the University of Connecticut and behind Holy Cross, with a school record time of 9:22.77. Running for Bates was the quartet of Alexander, first-year Katie Bash (Wallingford, Pa.), senior Jen Caban (Bedford, Mass.) and first-year Jenna Ligor (Denmark, Maine). The performance beats the previous school mark of 9:39.7, set in 1980 by Susan Hopfe, Dorothy Donovan, Kathy Leonard and Renata Cosby, by an incredible 17 seconds.
Other Bates highlights Saturday included the 4×400 relay team of junior Amy Rosania (Rye Beach, N.H.), senior Julie Shelkey (Conway, Mass.), sophomore Jen Marino (Methuen, Mass.) and sophomore Tara Higgins (Hyde Park, Vt.), running 4:08.35, the fifth-fastest time in Bates history, and finishing 19th.
Collectively, Bates scored five points to rank tied for 21st place out of 30 scoring teams with Keene State, and ahead of Worcester State and Boston College.
In the preliminary heats of the 500 on Friday, Alexander ran a time of 1:17.05, eclipsing the school mark she set last year of 1:19.09. Also on Friday, Caban became the second-fastest indoor 800-meter runner in Bates history with a time of 2:17.43, behind only Ashley Wentworth ’06 (2:15.22), while Bash made it to No. 4 on the all-time Bates performance list with a time of 2:19.04.
Bates fielded a distance medley relay team that recorded the seventh-best time in school history, 12:50.02. Running the event were junior Molly Balentine (Hampden, Maine) in the 1,200-meter leg, Higgins (Hyde Park, Vt.) in the 400, Rosania in the 800 and first-year Morgan Maciewicz (Marblehead, Mass.) in the anchor 1,600 meters.
Bates competes at the ECAC Championships next weekend at Wesleyan University.