Feb. 2, 2008
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – In the two-day Indiana Relays competition, the Notre Dame men’s and women’s track and field team recorded both top times and top places in its first indoor track and field meet away from home. The Irish traveled to Bloomington, Ind., for the meet and will return to Notre Dame with success.
On Friday night, the group of Marissa Treece, Amy Kohlmeier, Lindsay Ferguson and Becca Bauman dominated the one-mile open run, taking the top four spots in the race. Treece clocked in first for the Irish, taking the victory with a time of 5:04.00. Kohlmeier was next in the race, taking second with a time of 5:04.96, right on the heels of Treece. Ferguson and Bauman followed in third and fourth, respectively, and finished with respective times of 5:07.67 and 5:08.94.
Notre Dame was successful in both the men’s and women’s 800-meter invitational race. On the women’s side Kelly Langhans took third with a time of 2:12.79, a season best. For the men it was John Cavanaugh with the second-place finish. In just his first 800-meter race of the season, he cross the line with a BIG EAST qualifying time of 1:50.66, just missing the NCAA provisional time of 1:50.50.
Day two of the Indiana Relays featured finals in all events, including many that had prelims from Friday’s competition. Leading off the Notre Dame success was Balazs Molnar in the 400-meter open dash. Molnar took the victory with a solid lead on the rest of the field, clocking in with a season-best time of 48.35. He was over six-tenths of a second faster than the second-place finisher.
After qualifying for the shot-put finals on Friday night with a season-long put of 55-1, Mike Schubert went on to finish fourth overall on Saturday. Leading into the finals, Schubert sat with the second-longest throw. His longest in the finals was 54-10 ¼ for the top-five finish.
Schubert’s success in the throws would not be the only for the Irish. In the women’s throws events, Anna Weber continued to lengthen her throws in both the shot put and the weight throw. In the weight throw Weber went into the finals with a season-best throw of 63-7 ½, the third-best in the field. She went on to finish the competition in fifth with a finals-best throw of 61-7. Despite the fifth-place showing, she was the second-best collegiate athlete in the competition with second, third and fourth going to unattached athletes. She was also second best collegiately to two-time NCAA champion and four-time All-American Brittany Riley of Southern Illinois.
Rounding out the day for Weber was another fifth-place finish, this time in the shot put. She finished the prelims with a season-long toss of 47-7 ¼. In the finals she posted a best of 45-4 ½ for the top-five placing.
Back on the track, Joanna Schultz was in top form, taking second in the 400-meter open dash. She took the top spot with a time of 55.71, nearly cracking her season-best time of 55.64.
Finishing out the day with a bang for the Irish was the 4×800-meter relay with the squad of Langhans, Treece, Molly Sullivan and Natalie Johnson. The quad dominated the field to take the victory by four seconds. Johnson pulled in the final leg of the relay, crossing the line with a relay time of 9:04.97.
The Irish return home next weekend to play host to the Meyo Invitational, one of the premier collegiate competitions in the nation. The Meyo Invitational holds the always-exciting `Meyo Mile’ and will feature the Ryan Shay 3,000-meter run this season.
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