After finishing 6th place at the Great Dane Invitational last week, the women’s track and field team headed to Boston for the John Thomas Terrier Classic on Friday. The Red Storm ended the day with eight top-10 finishes. Head Coach Jim Hurt was very happy with the personal and season bests from the runners.
“As expected we had an outstanding meet with numerous personal and season bests, qualifying marks to the ECAC and nationally-ranked performances,” Head Coach Jim Hurt said. “We saved the best for last as Claire Mooney came from behind to help us win the 4×400-meter relay and Nyla Woods and Ann Dagrin took first and second in the weight throw.”
The 4×400-meter relay team, which consisted of sophomore Jasmine Burkett and seniors Raquel Ricketts, Pariis Garcia, and Claire Mooney had passed Hampton University’s relay team and finished in 3:39.79. The four runner’s times’ are the 17th-fastest 4×400 time in the NCAA and on top of that, it is only two seconds slower than the overall school indoor record which was a time of 3:37.56 back in 1998 ECAC Championships.
The throwing duo of Ann Dargin and Nyla Woods took first and second in the 20-lb. throw. Woods first throw was 17.07 meters, but she kept continuing to progress each throw after that until she threw more than 60 feet on her final throw. On that final throw, Woods garnered another personal-best by an entire meter. Dargin finished in second with a toss of 16.96.
Sophomore Anointing Onuoha placed third in the long jump with a jump of 5.73 meters. On top of that, St. John’s sprinters had four more top-10 finishes for the Red Storm in the 400, 60, and the 200-meter dash. Pariis Garcia was amongst the runners who came out with two of these finishes. Just last week, Garcia was announced as ECAC and BIG EAST Women’s Track Athlete of the Week. Garcia also crossed the finish line of the 400-meter with Mooney as Garcia took 7th and then Mooney taking 8th place.
The other top-10 finish for Garcia was in the 200-meter dash, as she placed 9th taking on her new personal-best with a time of 24.41 seconds. She wasn’t the only one who came out of the 200-meter with a personal best, the other four St. John’s runners also did. Mooney, Shenika King and Maya Stephens were amongst the runners with personal bests. Stephens placed in the top-10 in the 60-meter dash with an overall time of 7.69 seconds.
As for the distance runner’s events, Stephanie Van Pelt placed 11th in the 800-meter race, 2:10.12, and 13th in the one-mile with a time of 4:53.43.
This week the Red Storm will travel to the Metropolitan Championships in Staten Island.
