ITHACA, NY -- Seventeen members of the Houghton University track & field program traveled to Ithaca College on Friday for the All-Atlantic Regional Championships. Seventy institutions are represented at this meet. The highlights were led by
Victoria Brewster continuing her superb sophomore campaign as Regional Champion in the 60m Dash. She improved her mark of 7.59 to 7.51, which is a new meet record, NCAA #3 mark, and the 8th fastest time in NCAA Division III history. On Saturday,
Alexa Belanger followed suit to win the Region in the High Jump. Her mark of 1.68m is a personal best, and NCAA #19. She will also compete in the NCAA Championships alongside Brewster next weekend. This marks the first two athletes to ever qualify for the NCAA Championships in program history.
On Friday, the distance medley relay teams both took off about four seconds from their Empire 8 performances. The men's team missed a top 8 podium performance by just one second!
Henry Sardina,
James Eustace,
Aidan Fish, and
Amos Bixler ran a time of 10:32.36, in what is 'likely' the second fastest time in program history.
Tabitha Clark,
Kyra Binney,
Gwenna Haas, and
Noelle Linenfelser ran time of 10:51.53 for 15th place.
Evan Kurtz ran in the 60m dash and finished with a time of 7.00 seconds. This is his second fastest time in a prelim ever, and the end of a brilliant indoor track & field career.
On Saturday,
Jenna Binney capped her season in the women's mile with a time of 5:26.42.
Henry Sardina moved up 10 spots from his seed in the 800m to run a personal best time of 1:57.43, for 14th place. Bixler ran the 3,000m in his second fastest time ever to finish 10th in the region with a time of 8:39.55.
Avery Belanger competed in the Triple Jump and achieved a mark of 13.16m, 30cm better than his Empire 8 performance a week ago. Finally, both 4 x 200m relays set program records to finish out the meet! The women's team of Brewster,
Davannah Dunn,
Jozie Zickafoose, and Belanger ran a time of 1:47.71 to break the 10+ year record by just over three tenths of a second. The men's team of Kurtz,
Tim Gordon, Belanger, and
Kealon Knight ran 1:33.64 to break the five year old record by less than a tenth of a second!
RESULTS
Patrick Hager commented on the meet, "It's just been a historic year, as a whole. We had a great recruiting class for both XC and T&F, hired Coach Beauregard as another full-time coach, sent our first XC athlete to NCAA Championships in the Fall, and now see not one, but two athletes achieve qualification for the NCAA Championships next week in indoor track & field. It's been a long time coming, and it's as sweet a feeling as I thought it'd be. Coach Beauregard and Coach
Brennan Lewandowski have done brilliant work in the day to day coaching and mentorship of Tori Brewster and
Alexa Belanger. It takes a special athlete, and special coaching to achieve this level of success. It's never been more difficult to make to it to these championships. I'm hoping that the floodgates are now open and our athletes, as a whole, continue to dream big and understand that we can achieve really big things here at Houghton."
The NCAA Championships will be hosted in Rochester, NY at Nazareth University. Brewster will compete in the 60m Dash Prelims on Friday afternoon. Belanger will compete in the High Jump on Saturday afternoon. The 60m Dash Final are on Saturday afternoon.
