Georgetown Starts Season On Right Foot at Relays

The Georgetown men’s and women’s track teams began their IC4A and ECAC outdoor track title defense last weekend at the Alabama Relays. Despite sending a small squad there, the Hoyas garnered several impressive results including first place finishes from senior Sasha Spencer in the women’s 400-meter run and the women’s 4 x 1500 and distance medley relay teams.

While both the men’s and women’s squads each sent only 12 or 13 athletes, some took advantage of the warmer weather and set personal bests.

“We had a lot of really good athletes that didn’t travel,” Director of Track and Field and Cross-Country Ron Helmer said. “You want to go somewhere warm and run some good races though.”

On the men’s side, sophomore Robert Wingate-Robinson set a personal record with a time of 21.31 seconds in the 200-meter run, good enough for ninth. Wingate-Robinson, along with freshman Robert Pickett and sophomores Wasim Greaves and James Graham guided the men’s 4 x 200 meter relay team to a record-breaking time of 1 minute 26.30 seconds. The new mark broke the old record, set in 1986, by more than a second.

Junior Brionne Dawson set a personal best mark of 19′ 3.5″ in the women’s long jump while also placing ninth in the triple jump.

“Dawson had a big [personal record] by almost a foot. She’s a good triple jumper and now we can count on her for the long jump on a championship level,” Helmer said.

The Hoyas’ 400-meter tandem of Spencer and senior Nickay Penado placed first and second as Spencer (53.68) edged out Penado (54.06) by the slimmest of margins. Georgetown also received impressive performances by its middle distance runners. In the 800-meter run, sophomore Jill Laurendeau (2:10.10) and junior Tyrona Heath (2:11.56) ran fifth and sixth, while senior Autumn Fogg’s third-place mark of 16:46.95 in the 5000-meter run was an NCAA provisional qualifying time.

The women’s 4 x 500 meter relay team of sophomore Carly Nuzbach, freshmen Triniere Clement and Rose Wetzel and senior Kate Crowley finished in a time of 18:54.09, comfortably beating second-place Vanderbilt by more than nine seconds. The women’s winning distance medley team of Fogg, Laurendeau, senior Melissa Richardson and senior Kristen Gordon finished in 11:54.83 to edge out Stanford.

The only men’s relay team that the Hoyas sent, the 4 x 800 meter team, finished second in its race with a time of 7:34.37. The team, consisting of freshmen Jesse O’ Connell and Matt Lewis, junior Matt Henry and sophomore Ezra Richards, was beaten out by Pittsburgh.

O’ Connell also put in an impressive time of 1:49.66 in the men’s 400-meter run, good enough for fourth place.

Georgetown will send competitors to the Raleigh Relays, in Raleigh, N.C. and to the Stanford Invitational next weekend.