Sunday, May 13, 2018

ECAC Championships: 4x800 relay record and WIN!!!



History is made step by step -- in every day of training, in every day of core, in every day of rolling out and stretching and ice bathing, and lifting, and the multitude of little things that add up to the big things of an ECAC title. Our women’s 4x800 relay team won the ECAC Championships and shattered last year’s school record by more than six seconds. It happened step by step, leg by marvelous, give-you-the-chills leg. Shea Bohan, doing what a champion leadoff leg does: Going out hard, making it stick, and handing that stick off decisively with a breakthrough leg of 2:13.464. Kerry Gaye, taking it and keeping that lead by going out aggressively and holding off hard-charging teams, 2:16.343. Jenna Robinson, the woman who literally OWNS this record, having been on three consecutive versions of it, running a truly graceful and awesome leg of 2:14.548 and handing off to Denise Grohn, who had Saturday’s school-record 1,500-meter race in her legs, and who held the burden of maintaining and extending that lead with a 2:15.986. But here’s the kicker of this championship. We had to wait 10 minutes to realize it was an actual championship! You see, our awesome relay won the first (“slow”) heat. The second (“fast”) heat came next. We watched impassively, knowing that we would at least score, with six teams in that race. However, as we watched the “fast” heat unfold, we realized that it wasn’t so fast, compared to our 9:00.34. And when the “winner” of the “fast” heat came charging down the finish stretch and crossed the line at 9:00.75, we realized that our win was really a win. As in: First place. In the meet! Wow! What a way to end the season; what a way to cap Jenna’s awesome career on the track. What a way to end an excellent weekend for our team. Neat!

Earlier in the day, in the pouring rain, with lane four drenched in puddles, Debbie Boerke finished a strong second in her section of the 400-meter hurdles, finishing a championship-caliber season with a 14th-place time of 1:02.49 – pretty good in that slop.

ECAC Championships
Princeton University
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Women’s results and splits
3,200-meter relay
1-Marist (Shea Bohan 2:13.464, Kerry Gaye 2:16.343, Jenna Robinson 2:14.548, Denise Grohn 2:15.986) 9:00.34 *school record, old record 9:06.60 by Shea Bohan, Emily Burns, Jenna Robinson, Denise Grohn, 2017)
400-meter hurdles
14. Debbie Boerke 1:02.49

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