Women's Track & Field | February 09, 2019
AMES, Iowa/ALLENDALE, Mich. – The Western Michigan track & field team wrapped up competition at the Iowa State Classic and the Grand Valley State Big Meet on Saturday.
Over at ISU, junior sprinter Madison Meredith shined once again. Meredith ran a season-best times in both the preliminaries and the finals of the 60-meter dash. She started off running 7.67 second and improved it to 7.63 to take second overall. Sophomore Diamond Mitchell ran a time of 7.82 to take fifth overall.
"Every year we seem to do the same thing," said head coach Kelly Lycan. "Once we get to February, our short sprinters start moving up the MAC rankings. We don't start out all that well but we got hot during the end of the indoor season and it looks like we're doing that again this year. We still have plenty of improving to do, but it's still a good sign to see."
Over in the 400-meter dash, both Taneidra Cain and Alex Bryant had personal-best times. Cain finished seventh overall after running 56.34, taking nearly a second off of her time from last week at the Meyo Invitational. Bryant ran 57.82.
Sophomore thrower Abena Atuobi took third overall in the shot put, throwing 46' 7.25" (14.20m).
Cain, Bryant, Meredith and Mitchell all combined to take 7th in the 4x400-meter relay after running a time of 3:51.32.
Over at GVSU, sophomore Tiere Richardson broke 11 meters for the first time in the triple jump, reaching a distance of 36' 2.25" (11.03m) and taking fourth place. Sophomore thrower Aniya Davis took seventh overall in the weight throw after throwing 52' 8.75" (16.07m"
Freshman Taylor Rucker ran a new personal-best time of 8.99 seconds in the preliminaries of the 60-meter hurdles, before running 9.08 in the finals to take third overall. Four different Broncos won their sections of the mile run. Courtney Allen ran a time of 5:14.20, Haley Ritsema ran 5:27.20 and Lila Rode ran 5:36.63. Allen and Ritsema also won their sections of the 800-meter run at 2:17.44 and 2:18.05.
"Seeing this whole group making progress is really encouraging," said associate head coach Taryn Sheehan, who was with the team at GVSU. "Across the board, we were very happy. We saw a lot of people compete and fight to win their heats. We got a lot of good things accomplished this weekend."
Cheryl White and Kayla Dominguez each won their sections of the 3,000-meter run. White had the team's top time of 10:37.32, while Dominguez ran 11:07.40. Kailyn Mince also had a big personal best in the event, running a time of 11:15.11.
Western Michigan splits up once again next week, heading to Ball State and back to Notre Dame on Friday.
