BOSTON -- The Yale women's track and field program enjoyed a successful day of competition at the 2024 UMass Lowell Riverhawk International on Friday. Perhaps buoyed by the excitement of competing on the new TRACK at new balance, the Bulldogs ran, jumped and threw to several new PRs.
Coming into the meet, the Bulldogs had hoped to continue the early season momentum established at last week's Yale-Dartmouth-Columbia tri-meet. And they did just that, as Lucija Grd's 8.64 second clocking for second place in the 60m hurdles put her just outside her own school record set at YDC. Over the flat 60m, Molly Harding, Mira Thakur and Larissa Giles were all just outside eight seconds.
The action then shifted to middle distance events, with Yale dominating the mile through a fantastic 1-2 from Kyra Pretre and Claire Archer. Exactly one second behind Pretre, Archer's 4:53.83 represented an impressive new PR. The Bulldogs also flexed their depth with Charlotte Whitehurst in fourth place in a PR of her own, 5:00.83. Remarkably, Pretre and Whitehurst both returned to the track to compete over 1000m later on, with Pretre placing third and Whitehurst placing sixth. Kylie Goldfarb, Miranda Lorsbach and Kathryn Rodrigues all also completed the same double, each of them running a PR in at least one of the two events. Their training partner Hebe Chadwick joined the PR club in the 3000m as she ran 9:41.32 for fifth.
In the weight throw, Bella Bergloff's 16.36m effort for eighth led the way ahead of teammates Makayla Harris, Kalei Memmer and Maria Leskovec. Bergloff doubled back in the shot put later on, where she competed alongside teammate Emma Peretti. Eileen Yang came close to her season-best mark with a 3.75m leap for fifth in the pole vault. In the long jump, Sydney Kunkler and Dominique Romain were separated by just 5 cm as they leapt out to 5.43m and 5.38m respectively, while Bharathi Subbiah's 11.56m jump put her 10th in the triple jump.
In the 400m, Gloria Guerrier continued her phenomenal first year at Yale by running a blistering 55.86 to finish fourth. Not to be outdone, her sister Victoria Guerrier came second in the 500m thanks to a 1:15.67 clocking, just ahead of Bridget Vitu's 1:16.55 in third. Fellow first year Kalista Villatoro also impressed in the 800m, placing fourth among stiff Ivy League competition in a collegiate PR of 2:13.10. Also running a PR was Ruby Barton, two seconds behind in eighth. Yale also demonstrated its depth in the 200m, with Thakur's 25.39 leading 10 Bulldogs under 27 seconds on the day. Thakur, along with Harding and the Guerrier twins, doubled back in the 4x400m at the end of the day, with Yale cruising to victory by more than four seconds in 3:48.58.
The Bulldogs return to Boston next weekend, with the team split between the Crimson Elite meet at Harvard and the Bruce Lehane Scarlet & White Invitational hosted by Boston University.
