Vanderbilt Track and Field continued to build momentum with 13 personal-best performances this weekend in meets hosted by Boston University and Harvard, respectively.. On Friday, Feb. 2, the Commodores competed in Harvard’s Crimson Elite meet before meeting many of their same competitors across the Charles River on Saturday for Boston University’s Bruce Lehane Scarlet and White Invitational.
“This was a meet that allowed us to show our discipline, resiliency and ambition,” Vanderbilt’s Director of Track and Field Althea Thomas said. “We had 13 personal bests and saw athletes establish themselves as strong roles for our team.”
Vanderbilt kicked off Friday’s meet with races from Haley Bishop and Ella Escobar, who both ran in the 60-meter dash and recorded times of 7.78 seconds and 7.69 seconds, respectively.
These races were followed up by another heat of the 60 that featured Vanderbilt freshmen Anaya Webster (7.86 seconds) and Rowan Houston (8.37 seconds).
Vanderbilt’s Falon Spearman had arguably the best performance of the day with two personal bests in the qualifying and semifinal rounds of the 60-meter hurdles, where she followed up an initial 8.64 seconds finish with an 8.51 second performance. With the latter performance, she is now tied for fourth on Vanderbilt’s all-time leaderboard for the event.
Vanderbilt’s other top-10 performance of the afternoon came from graduate student Madison Murray, who recorded a personal-best of 3,612 points in the pentathlon, a mark good for 10th on the day and 7th in Vanderbilt history for the event. Other competitors for Vanderbilt at Harvard’s meet were sophomore Santana Spearman and freshman Lena Gooden.
The Commodores were much busier in the second event of the trip, where 15 Commodores competed across a myriad of events. Vanderbilt had a number of impressive performances at the Invitational, started off by Allyria McBride recording a time of 54.07 seconds in the 400-meters. With the time, McBride claimed fourth in the event and the fifth-best time in Vanderbilt history.
McBride’s record-breaking performance was followed up by impressive performances by Julia Rosenberg (4:39.03) and Emma Curry (4:46.08) in the 1-mile. With the times, the pair of juniors claimed the second and fourth-best finishes in Vanderbilt history in the event.
Other notable performances from Vanderbilt came from Webster, who recorded Vanderbilt’s fourth-best ever long jump distance with 5.88-meters, and Catherine Sommerfield, who finished seventh in the 3,000 meters with a time of 9 minutes, 36.77 seconds.
After a successful weekend in Boston, the Commodores will return to action at home with the Music City Challenge on Feb. 9 and 10.
