Alison Wade/New York Road Runners Erin Sicher helped the distance medley team place third at the NCAAs.

Senior Erin Sicher saved the best for last.

After guiding Georgetown’s perennially strong distance medley relay teams to fifth and sixth place national finishes as a freshman and sophomore, last weekend Sicher joined juniors Monica Hargrove, Treniere Clement and Kori Hamilton to place third at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark.

The group’s time of 11 minutes, 10.95 seconds places them third on Georgetown’s all-time record list, and the six points they obtained in team scoring single-handedly earned the Hoyas a 27th place overall finish in the broader contest. eanwhile, the men competed with just one athlete – junior Jesse O’Connell – and although he didn’t register a score in the competition, by virtue of his time in the preliminaries, O’Connell still managed to join the members of the women’s distance medley relay team in earning All-American honors.

“Our luck didn’t pan out in some areas, but I felt overall one of the best things for us was that all of the kids who attended the meet came out as All-Americans,” Associate Head Coach Andrew Valmon said. “The ladies’ DMR just ran a spectacular race.”

Clement led off the distance medley by running a personal-best time of 3:23 on the 1,200m leg. She handed off to Hargrove, who ran the 400m leg in 52.9, followed by Hamilton, who timed 2:09 on the 800m leg. Hamilton handed the baton to Sicher with the Hoyas in fifth place entering the 1,600m anchor leg.

“I was running behind Stanford and Arkansas, and with two laps to go, I passed Stanford, and with a half lap remaining, topped Arkansas,” Sicher said. The third-place finish makes Sicher a four-time All-American. “It was an exciting race, we all knew what we had to do ahead of time, and because we were all experienced, it seemed easy.”

Georgetown faced harder luck in other areas, where O’Connell in the 800m preliminaries, and Clement in the mile preliminaries were both edged at the tape to become the fastest finishers in their respective races not to advance to the finals.

The frustration came as an extension of the team’s results the previous week at the Notre Dame Invitational, where senior James Graham ran the 400m in 46.36 to smash the previous school record of 47.08, and junior Ali Najjar ran the 800m in a blistering 1:49.0 – each outstanding performances, but both missing national qualifying requirements by the slimmest of margins.

“By the end of the day, James Graham was the last guy out of the NCAAs,” Valmon said. “They took 14 men, and he was 15th. The last qualifying time they accepted was 46.35 and he ran 46.36, which was tough.”

Najjar’s run at Notre Dame left him three spots away from also making it to nationals.

“I think this may be a blessing in disguise because now they’ll know that you can’t keep anything too close – there’s no room for error,” Valmon said. “With Jesse getting to the meet and just missing the finals, and with James just missing getting in the meet, this is just one lesson these men will have to learn. They can’t take anything for granted. But I feel like we can definitely take something positive out of this indoor season – which is good. They had a great season, we ended up breaking a lot of school records, and I feel that they are ready to go to the next level and get ready for outdoors.”

ECAC-IC4A Championships

A week before the NCAA Championships, some Georgetown track and field athletes made the trip to Boston for the ECAC-IC4A Championships where, without many of their top middle-distance runners, the men placed third and the women placed 17th.

“The men had a tremendous meet,” Coach Patrick Henner said. “Everybody we took ran very well, so we were very excited that, even though we didn’t have our mainstay of 400m and 800m runners there, we were still able to come out third as a team. We placed in the 800m, 1,000m, mile, 3,000m, 5,000m, 4 x 800m and distance medley relay, so we were very pleased.”

Henner singled out the performance of sophomore Nat Glackin, who ran a personal record time of 1:51 in the 800m trials, and a 1:50.7 carry on the distance medley relay during the first day, and returned the following day to place fourth in the finals of the 800m and hand off after the third leg of the distance medley relay with the lead.

“He had an incredible weekend,” Henner said. “We were really pleased that he stepped it up like that.”

Senior George O’Loughlin and sophomore Tommy Manning both had strong performances in the mile, where Manning bettered his previous personal record in the preliminaries the first day and again in the finals the next day. O’Loughlin roughly matched his personal record in each race.

Freshman Chris Lukezic claimed the team’s sole first-place finish by winning the 1,000m in 2:26.58.

Other point-scoring efforts on the men’s side came from freshman Stanley Lagrenade in the 500m (1:03.77), senior Mike Smith in the 5,000m (14:31.87) and sophomores Rod Koborsi (8:17.06) and Chris Esselborn (8:17.52) in the 3,000m.

The women’s team received standout performances from junior Colleen Kelly in the mile (4:51.44), sophomore Nicole Lee in the 5,000m (16:57.74), junior Rose Wetzel in the 1,000m (2:56.26) and sophomore Jodee Adams-Moore in the 3,000m (9:53.38).