HANOVER, N.H. – The Yale's women's track and field team rounded out their Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Championships with an eighth-place team finish on Sunday. After a fierce first day of competition Saturday there were no less than 15 finals taking place on day two, with plenty of impressive performances in what was a spirited effort from the Bulldogs.
The highlight of the day for Yale was undoubtedly senior Samantha Friborg's phenomenal second-place performance in the 800m. Friborg ran a gutsy race, going through 400m in under 60 seconds before demonstrating remarkable strength over the final two laps to finish in a time of 2:06.98. With a Princeton athlete closing her down over the final strides, Friborg maintained her form to hold her off by just 0.03 seconds. Such was Friborg's speed, it took a meet record of 2:04.54 from Penn's Bronwyn Patterson to beat her, which is all the more impressive given Dartmouth's flat track that typically slows athletes by around 0.4 seconds per lap as opposed to a banked track. Friborg now boasts an illustrious resume of four scoring positions - fifth, sixth, third and second - in her four indoor Heps competitions. She'll no doubt be looking to add a title to that collection at outdoor Heps in three months' time.
Earlier, Yale's two finalists in the mile, cross country team captain Kyra Pretre and first year Linde Fonville, had kicked off the action for the Bulldogs, as they placed seventh and 10th in times of 4:53.02 and 4:59.17 respectively in a tightly contested event. They were followed by teammates Kathryn Rodrigues, Sophia Karperos and Miranda Lorsbach who competed in the 5000m. Over the shorter 400m distance, team captain Aliya Boshnak led by example with a seventh-place finish thanks to her 57.10 clocking. Elsewhere, in the field events, Bella Bergloff threw a PR in the weight throw of 16.08m to finish 13th place. Also finishing 13th was Bharathi Subbiah in the triple jump, while senior Abrianna Barrett placed 11th in the high jump.
As always, the final events of the day, and perhaps the most fiercely contested ones too, were the relays. In the distance medley relay, a young team consisting of just first years and sophomores finished in 11:39.22 to place a battling fifth. After Carmel Fitzgibbon put the team in good position with her opening 1200m leg, Bridget Vitu kicked on with a strong 400m effort before Ruby Barton (800m) and Claire Archer (1600m) brought the team home in a scoring position. The 4 x 800m team also placed fifth, as Iris Bergman, Fonville, Pretre and Friborg combined to surge over the line in a time of 8:53.96. Finally, in the 4 x 400m, there was another fifth place in store for the Bulldogs as Sydney McCord, Molly Harding, Mira Thakur and captain Boshnak rounded out a promising day of competition for Yale.
The Bulldogs finished the day, and the meet, with 14 points to put them eighth overall in the team standings. However, with just five days until the start of the ECAC Indoor Championships, the athletes must pick themselves up quickly in order to be ready to go again in Boston next weekend. Expect the Bulldogs to continue to impress then.
Full results from this weekend's competition can be found here.
