Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

TRACK & FIELD | Women Impress at NCAAs

The Georgetown track and field team travelled to Albuquerque, N.M., last weekend to compete in the 2014 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships. The women’s team had an impressive showing, but the men’s team underperformed according to Director of Track and Field and Cross-Country Patrick Henner.

“I was very pleased on the women’s side,” he said. “I don’t think the meet went perfectly for us, but we did a lot of really good things when we competed well. Honestly, I was disappointed on the men’s side. But we also have to realize on the men’s side, it was the first time any of them had ever been there at that meet.”

On Friday night, senior Billy Ledder ran in the 800-meter semifinal, junior Andrea Keklak and freshman Sabrina Southerland ran in the women’s 800m semifinal and both men’s and women’s distance medley relay teams took to the track.

Ledder started off the evening lining up in the fourth position of the first waterfall. He struggled to gain good positioning and ended up getting bumped into seventh place, where he stayed for the remainder of the race. He finished with a time of 1:56.44 and did not advance to the finals.

“Ledder got bumped in his race, and he let that get to him,” Henner said. “Instead of getting more determined to make the final, he got distracted by that.”

Next was the women’s 800m race, in which Keklak qualified for finals as she finished first in her semifinal heat with a time of 2:07.13. Southerland began the race strong, but fell to seventh place in her third and fourth laps. She finished in fifth place, but did not earn a spot in the finals.

The women’s DMR team — junior Hannah Neczypor, senior Deseree King, Southerland and junior Katrina Coogan — took seventh place with a time of 11:18.39. This time earned the team all-American status.

The men’s DMR team — comprised of freshman Amos Bartelsmeyer, sophomore Devante Washington, freshman Ryan Manahan and sophomore Ahmed Bile — struggled from the start.

“Bartelsmeyer has done a great job for us as a freshman, but he made a couple of tactical mistakes in there,” Henner said. “He was coming into the handoffs right there with everybody, but he was near the back of the pack. Then your handoffs get messed up and your quarter-miler can’t run a good leg, and then all of a sudden you’re out of the race.”

In the third leg, Manahan had the fifth-fastest time with a split of 1:49.97 in the 800m stretch, but it was not enough to give the Hoyas an edge. The team finished 10th overall with a time of 9:57.85.

“Ryan Manahan put in a supreme effort to get us back into the race,” Henner said. “But we just couldn’t get back into the race on the men’s side in the DMR.”

Saturday, Keklak ran the women’s 800m final and earned aWll-American honors with a fourth-place finish and a time of 2:06.42. Despite starting out in the lead, Keklak fell behind after the first turn of the bell lap but continued to fight for the fourth-place position with two runners from Oregon.

Coogan competed in the women’s 3000m final and also earned All-American honors by taking fifth place with a time of 9:17.38. For the first half of the race, she was in third place but slipped to seventh place with three laps to go. Coogan, however, regained her composure to finish the race in fifth place.

The Blue and Gray will take this weekend off before heading to Richmond on March 28 and 29 for their first meet of the outdoor season. This meet is more about preparing for the next few weeks than it is about the competition itself.

“We’ll just use that meet as kind of a tune up or a rust-buster,” Henner said. “The NCAA regional meet that you qualify for the NCAA finals is not until the last weekend in May. At the same time, some of our best opportunities to get qualifying for that meet are going to come within the next two to four weeks.”

After a weekend of relative rest, the Hoyas will be back in competition season until June.

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