Tigers end season with 4th place finish at Heps

This past weekend was an important one for the Princeton track program. On Friday, the top runners on both the men's and women’s teams traveled by bus to New York City to compete in the Ivy League Indoor Heptagonal Championships at the Armory Track and Field Center. Although the women’s team began Sunday’s events with a lead, its ultimate tie with Cornell for fourth place was filled with personal records and great performances.

The team’s 81 points were achieved through consistent efforts across all events, with an especially strong showing from the competing sophomores. Both Anna Jurew and Elisa Steele achieved lifetime personal bests in their events. Jurew achieved a lifetime personal best in the 800m, with a time of 2:10.28 and a fifth place finish. Steele ran a 1:12.96 time in the 500m, which is the third fastest time in University history, to get third place in her event. Alie Fordyce ran a 4:52.12 mile time to score with a sixth place finish. Ellie Randolph scored in the long jump with a distance one centimeter off the school record. Allie Klimkiewicz also ran a 16:36.06 5k to place fifth and score for her team.

Other personal bests came from freshman Heide Baron and junior Kennedy O’Dell. Baron scored for the Tigers in the 400m finals with a time of 56.50, as did fellow freshman Ashley Willingham with a 57.06 finish. O’Dell achieved a personal best in the shot put with a throw of 14.14m; she earned a total of six points for the team over the course of the weekend.

Princeton also gained points from its performance in all three relays. In the distance-medley relay, consisting of freshman Madeleine Sumner, junior Maia Craver, senior Lizzie Bird, and Fordyce, the team took fourth place, with a time of 11:27.43. In the final event of the meet, the 4x400m relay, the team placed fourth once again. The major highlight of the weekend was the women’s 4x8 relay, where the team of sophomore Jackie Berardo, senior Zoe Sims, senior Katie Hanss, and Jurew achieved Princeton’s third fastest time in history, bringing home a first place medal for the Tigers. Berardo started the relay off with a 2:14.431 split, putting the Tigers in a tight second place behind the Columbia Lions. Sims and Jurew followed Berardo’s lead with 2:09.835 and 2:10.011 respectively, with Jurew gaining on Columbia and ultimately giving her team the lead. Hanss anchored the relay and closed out the event with a 2:09.178 run to finish more than two seconds in front of the Penn Quakers, with a final time of 8:43.46.