The anticipation has been building steadily throughout the fall for a number of members on the Georgetown track and field squad – having trained tirelessly for months while watching their fellow teammates perform in the cross country season, both the men and women’s indoor track teams eagerly took to the track at Bucknell’s Bison Opener this past Saturday, providing a glimpse of the team’s encouraging potential for the upcoming season. Although many of the rookie Hoyas were donning the Blue and Gray for the first time, a host of solid individual performances were to be seen. Taking first for the Hoyas were sophomore Danny Harris in the 1000-meter run with a time of 2:33.43 and freshman Toby Ulm in a Big East and IC4A Championship qualifying time of 1:04.01. Fellow freshman Matthew Jimenez qualified for the Big East in the shot put, with an eighth-place throw of 14.73 meters. Freshman Chris Kinney, in his first meet as a Hoya, proved that Georgetown has become increasingly more competitive in the hurdles, an area in which the team had been lacking only a few years ago. Kinney, bouncing back from a disappointing 60-meter hurdles preliminary race, went on to qualify for both the Big East and the IC4As, by placing first in the finals with a new school record of 8.1 seconds. Taking first for the women was senior Ashley Hubbard, who won the 800-meter run with a Big East qualifying time of 2:15.27. Junior Buky Bamigboye’s 60-meter hurdle time of 8.77 seconds in the preliminaries also earned her a spot in the championship. Hubbard and Bamigboye teamed up with senior Alex Baptiste and juniors Charlena Tillet to win the relay. Also qualifying for the Big East was sophomore Tanore Barrow, with her fourth-place throw of 12.57 meters in the shot put. While Assistant Coach Scott McLeod said that the meet was more of a way to get in some competition and see where the team was at, the Hoyas nonetheless showed a promising start for the coaching staff. “This first meet was mostly a chance to put on a uniform and compete,” McLeod said, “but most of all, know where we are so we see for the rest of the season what we need to build and work towards. I was very pleased; we had some bright highlights.” Both the men and women’s teams have been training to compete for the Big East Indoor Championship, a title that the women come in defending from last year’s conference win. “This is the beginning of the mantra we have,” first-year Assistant Coach Shelia Burrell said. “That there’s something special happening at Georgetown, [and] I can say that after this first meet, even though we still have some work to do, as long as we keep executing well, we can have a really good season.”