Women's Track & Field | May 09, 2019

MUNCIE, Ind. – Western Michigan's Erin Dowd and Madison Meredith turned in high-end performance in qualifiers, while the Bronco Track and Field team got on the board to wrap up day one at the 2019 Outdoor Mid-American Conference Championships at Ball State University on Thursday.
 
All of WMU's points came in the javelin, with freshman Olivia O'Brien taking sixth overall with a distance of 135' 9" (41.37m) to score three points. Senior Audrey Oswalt picked a point after finishing in eighth place.
 
Senior Allison Hufnagel currently sits in the points in seventh place in the heptathlon after four events with a total of 2,844. She, along with Clare Lycan, will finish up on Saturday with the long jump, javelin and 800-meter run. Of the four events on the day, Hufnagel's best performance came in the high jump, reaching a height of 5' 4.25" (1.63m), earning 771 points and finishing in third.
 
Dowd dusted her competition in the preliminaries of the 400-meter hurdles. She set a University Track at Briner Sports Complex record in the event after finishing with a time of 58.48 seconds. Her closest competition was Ohio's Ashleigh Carr at 1:00.46. Junior Alex Bryant finished one spot shy of qualifying for Saturday's finals after running a time of 1:03.15
 
Meredith turned in a big personal-best time in the 200-meter dash. The junior sprinter ran a time of 23.93 seconds, winning her heat, to qualify for Saturday's finals. Her time was the second-fastest in the field, just .19 seconds behind Ball State's Bryeana Byrdsong.
 
In addition to concluding the heptathlon, Friday's action will also include finals in the long jump, shot put and the steeple chase. WMU will also compete in prelims of the 100-meter hurdles, 400-meter dash and 800-meter run.