ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. — The Catholic University women's track and field teams will enter day two of the Landmark Conference Championships in third place after a successful first day. Five out of 20 total events are complete after competition came to a close on a rainy Saturday in Elizabethtown.
Defending champions Susquehanna is currently setting the pace after scoring points in all five scored events. The River Hawks are the only team that has had an athlete contribute points in all of the scored events, helping to accumulate a score of 47.5. It's tight among the trailing pack as Moravain sits second (37) ahead of Catholic (30) and Scranton (28.).
The 1500m was the premier event of the day from a Cardinal perspective as Catholic put three runners in the top four. The trio of Emily Moehringer, Lauren Cerda and Apolline Gaspers all followed Goucher's impressive Tanise Thornton-Fillyaw to the line to haul 19 total points in the event. Moehringer (4:36.99) and Cerda's (4:38.16) times were personal bests and push them into second and third all-time in Catholic program history, hopping over Gaspers whose time on the day (4:42.14) was just .88 slower than her personal best.
Georgia Nussey placed second in the 10,000-meter run, posting a time of 38:55.03 to add eight points to the team total. She followed Tara Smurla of Moravian to the line who won the event by 30 seconds while Stella Noecker finished ninth with a personal-best time of 40:37.23.
In the field, Brigid Byrnes placed sixth in the long jump with a mark of 5.25 meters while Erin Driscoll produced a season's-best mark of 4.84m for a 10th-place finish.
Erin Buckley qualified through to tomorrow's final in the 100-meter dash. She was the fastest women to qualify on time as the three heat winners earned automatic berth's into tomorrow's final. Buckley ran 12.75 while the three heat winners produced times of 12.70 and a pair of 12.74s. Megan Burns also produced a personal-best time of 13.19 but was among four other Cardinals who could not join Buckley in the final.
It was a similar story in the 200-meter dash as, again, Buckley was the lone qualifier for the Cardinals. This time she advanced automatically by winning her heat which proved to be the slowest of the three. Her personal-best time of 26.78 was ultimately the sixth-fastest in the field as Burns set her second personal-best of the day (26.93) but again failed to qualify for tomorrow's final.
The 100-meter hurdles is an event of real promise for the Cardinals as they look to chase down the River Hawks tomorrow. Four Cardinals qualified through to tomorrow's final, headlined by Byrnes who won her heat with a time of 15.82. Byrnes was one of just two women to finish under 16 seconds as Edith Tomasek (16.67), Clare Marsh (16.74) and Mia McConnell (16.96) all qualified on time.
The Cardinals will embark on their quest to reel in Susquehanna tomorrow at 11 a.m. in what looks to be another rainy day on the track and in the field.
