After a successful indoor season in which the women finished in the nation’s top 25, the Georgetown track and field team kicked off its outdoor campaign this weekend at the UVA Team Swashbuckle meet in Charlottesville, Va. The Hoyas put up 10 Big East championship-qualifying times in the one-day event, and, once again, the Georgetown relay teams impressed.
The Blue and Gray faced tough competition from the likes of Virginia and Army, who took the top two spots, respectively, for both the men and women. Georgetown’s men took fourth place, while the women finished eighth.
Seniors Chela Green and London Finley and juniors Tenille Stoudenmire and Amanda Kimbers led the women’s 4×400-meter relay team to a second-place finish behind Virginia’s ‘A’ team. Finishing in a time of 3:44.06, the squad earned eight points for Georgetown.
The Hoyas also took three of the top 10 spots in the women’s 1500m run, as junior Meaghan Gregory, sophomore Shanique Dasilva and freshman Kristen Walsh took fifth, eighth and 10th places, respectively.
Kimbers and Stoudenmire stood out for Georgetown this weekend. The duo dominated the 400m run with times of 55.03 and 56.08 seconds, respectively. That was good enough to give them the top two spots in the event. Freshman Bria Murray also competed, finishing in 16th place with a time of 1:02.57.
In his first race for the Hoyas, graduate student Kevin Wilson — who was an All-American for track at George Mason — took third place in the 200m dash with a time of 21.69s. Senior Biyerem Okengwuclocked a time of 22.72s in the same event, earning a 13th-place finish. Okengwu also competed in the 110m hurdles, and his time of 14.61s put him in fourth place.
In the 800m run, graduate student Toby Ulm took second place with a time of 1:52.50, while freshman Omar Kaddurah edged out Army freshman Clyde Wilson for a sixth-place finish with a time of 1:54.43. Five other Hoyas competed in the event, but only Ulm and Kaddurah scored points for the Blue and Gray.
Georgetown fared even better in the 5000m run, in which junior Ben Furcht and senior Mark Dennintook first and third place, respectively. Impressively, both runners broke the 15-minute mark. Meanwhile, junior Dylan Sorensen earned 10 points for the Hoyas by taking first place in the steeplechase.
Another bright spot for the men’s team was the 4x400m relay team of Ulm, Wilson, senior AustinPerron and sophomore Hansel Akers, who finished second only to Virginia’s ‘A’ team. The squad’s time of 3:10.98 was the fastest 4x400m time for Georgetown since 2005.
The Hoyas will try to continue their good start when they compete this weekend on both sides of the country at the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif. and the Raleigh Relays in Raleigh, N.C.
