The men’s and women’s track teams may be running out of milestones to achieve. This weekend, the women’s team won its 10th consecutive Centennial Conference Championship while the men won their eighth straight.
Freshman Marissa Hsu spoke about the team’s winning streak.
“I would say that the team’s past streak in combination with seeing how the team was racing during the season gave me confidence in knowing that I would be running alongside a group of amazing runners,” she said.
For the women, junior Annie Gutierrez was the big winner of day one. She won the high jump with a height of 1.51 meters, the pole vault with a height of 3.56 meters, the pentathlon 800-meter run with a time of 2:39.42, and the pentathlon 60-meter hurdles with a time of 9.16. In the end, Gutierrez took first place in the pentathlon with 2,973 points.
Senior Sam Levy won the 5000-meter race in 17:18.72. Levy was also a member of the first-place distance medley team alongside sophomore Ella Baran, sophomore Ashley Tyburski and senior Rebecca Grusby.
In the preliminary 60-meter dash, Hsu broke the event record with a time of 7.84 seconds. In the final 60-meter dash, she bested that time, coming in first place with a time of 7.82 seconds.
Hsu elaborated on her impressive time.
“It was definitely extremely exciting because my college experience so far with track has consisted of running with a group of motivated runners and with some really dedicated coaches while also having more intense and purposeful workouts,” she said.
Senior Felicia Körner won the one-mile run for the second time in her career with a time of 5:06.73. Freshman Helena Hall-Thomsen won the 400-meter dash. She won another gold in the 4x400 relay with teammates sophomore Tyburski and juniors Alexandra Damron and Hailey Sheppell.
The team ended with a whopping 262.25 points. Dickinson College finished in second place with 123.5 points. It doesn’t seem like the team’s 10-year winning streak will be ended any time soon.
For the men, there was no shortage of individual victories either. Senior Matthew Su found himself in first place in the heptathlon. But despite his incredible finishes, Su was outdone by freshman Liam Posten.
Posten’s first place finishes included the heptathlon 1000-meter run with a time of 2:48.84 and the heptathlon pole vault with a height of 4.13 meters. He ended up with 4,352 points in the rest of the events and finished in first in the heptathlon.
In the non-heptathlon events, Hopkins saw several top finishes. In the 5000-meter run, junior Jared Pangallozzi finished in first place with a time of 14:50.33.
During the second day of competition, sophomore Justin Canedy became the first person ever to win four individual events in the Centennial Conference Championships. He won the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.98 seconds, the 60-meter hurdles with a time of 8.45, the high jump with a height of 2.02 meters and the long jump with a distance of 7.05 meters.
Winning four events is an incredible accomplishment, but Canedy won all four in a single day as well, making for an even more impressive feat. He is also the first person in Centennial history to win both the long and high jumps since 2007.
All of this individual success landed the team 212.5 points. This put them in first place and was the sixth time a team scored 200 points in this event.
Hsu looked forward to the rest of the postseason.
“For team goals, we definitely want to stay healthy for these next two weeks before some go off to [National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Indoor Championships],” she said. “We also want the team to keep up the momentum and support for those competing. For me, I will be competing in a last chance type meet [Tufts Last Chance meet] in hopes of making NCAAs in the 60-meter dash.”
The teams will go to Boston to compete in the Tufts Last Chance meet before heading to the NCAA Championships on March 13.
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