After staging a strong finish to the indoor track season in mid-March, Hoya track and field immediately sprinted into the outdoor season.

On March 13, the men and women closed their indoor season by participating in the NCAA Division I Indoor Championship where senior distance runner Rod Koborsi took eighth place in the 3,000-meter race and 10th place in the 5,000, clocking 13:52.55 in the latter to put him fifth on Georgetown’s all-time list for the event.

Two weeks later, he did it again. After making the transfer to outdoors in the intervening weeks, Koborsi shattered the 15-year-old Georgetown 10,000-meter run record with a sixth place finish at the Stanford Invitational on March 26. The previous record was set in 1990 by future Olympian John Trautmann (CAS ’90).

On the women’s side, the Hoyas posted fifth in the distance medley at the NCAA meet, and senior Colleen Kelly took 15th in the 3,000, clocking 9:54.24. At Stanford, senior Nicole Lee finished 16th in the 10,000 with a time of 33:55.42, which automatically qualified her for the NCAA outdoor meet in early June.

Four Hoyas were recognized as All-Americans after the NCAA indoor meet, significantly down from the 10 who were recognized last year. But Assistant Coach Scott McLeod is not worried.

“A lot of the people [who were All-Americans] last year were seniors,” he said. “We’re not really starting over, but . our team is pretty much young again.”

The Hoyas who did not travel to Stanford the weekend of March 26 raced instead at the Raleigh Relays in Raleigh, N.C., where the team fared well, grabbing three first place finishes. Junior Chris Lukezic won the 5,000 for the men with a time of 14:01.68 while freshman Maggie Infeld captured the 1,500 for the women, clocking 4:28.60. The Hoya women’s 4 x 800-meter squad easily won their event with a time of 9:08.36, edging out second-placed Duke by over a second.

“[Infeld’s] been having a really, really good season – what we call a freshman campaign,” McLeod said.

While the women’s cross country team did not qualify for a berth at the national meet in the fall, Infeld qualified as an individual. The Hoya men also captured a runner-up finish in the 4 x 1500-meter race and in the Spring Medley. Just like the men, the women were the runner-up in the 4 x 1500-meter race.

Georgetown’s women took three second-place finishes at the Yellow Jacket Invitational on April 2 in Atlanta, Ga. Sophomore Kandance Fergueson, who is ranked eighth in the nation for the 400, ran second in that event with an NCAA qualifying time of 53:88 while her teammate Nana Hanson-Hall, a sophomore, ran second in the 800-meter run, clocking 2:09.58. The women also finished second in the 4 x 400-meter relay.

In Atlanta, the men took fourth in the 4 x 400-meter relay.

According to McLeod, the main objective right now is to qualify as many people for the ECAC and IC4A Championships in mid-May, a goal he expects “pretty much everyone on the team” to meet. The team is working primarily on both speed and strength conditioning to prepare for meets later in the season, he said.

The Hoyas race today at the Duke Invitational in Durham, N.C. Next weekend, part of the team heads to the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in Walnut, Calif., while the rest will race at the Carolina Fast Times in Chapel Hill, N.C.