Outtz, Kroshus shine for w. track at Heptagonals

Not everyone was entirely happy last weekend as the Princeton women's outdoor track team finished seventh at Heptagonals.

Heps represent the finale of each track season, when all eight Ivy League schools and Navy come together to challenge each other for the championship. The Tigers failed to equal or surpass their third-place result from last year.

Princeton didn't score in several entire sections of competition. No Princeton runner even ran in the final scoring heats of the 100-meter, 200m, or 800m races, for example. Also, the only thrower to score was senior Rachel Rosemeyer, who took sixth in the discus throw with a distance of 40.49-meters.

Part of this was due to a very young team and part due to tough competition, especially from eventual winner and runner-up Cornell and Yale. But still, undisguised disappointment was evident in several of the girls' remarks.

"Everyone was really upset," freshman Catherine Ferrell said. "Obviously, we were really hoping to do better. I think we left a lot of points at home, which would have really helped us to do better. But even aside from that, it just came down to not performing well enough against the competition."

Not all of the news was bad, though. Several facets of the Princeton plan did come together as expected, most notably quality performances by junior Hasina Outtz and several members of the distance cadre.

Outtz placed second in both the 100m and 400m hurdles, with times of 14.23 seconds and 1:00.17, respectively. Her performance lived up to the high expectations she had been creating for herself all season.

Starting at the 1500m, the Tiger women did begin to represent themselves. Ferrell finished sixth in that event, crossing the finish line with a time of 4:31.95. Sophomore Carrie Strickland placed eighth in the 1500m.

Junior Emily Kroshus continued her career-long battle with Yale's O'Neill twins, finishing third to them in both the 5k and 10k, with times of 16:47.47 and 35:56.55, respectively.

Ferrell also placed just behind the Yale twins in the 3k, placing third with a time of 9:43.36, while fellow freshman Meredith Lambert finished right after Kroshus in the 5k at fourth, ending with a time of 16:48.18. In addition, junior Laura Petrillo took fourth in the 3000m steeplechase.

The 4x100m relay team of Outtz, sophomore Leslie Warren, freshman Juliette Pousset, and sophomore Chanel Lattimer took fourth in that event, with a final time of 47.68. Also, the 4x400 team of Warren, Lattimer, Outtz, and junior Didi Yep took sixth with a time of 3:52.48. Jenn Byrd finished fifth in the heptathlon.

So even though the team did poorly overall, there were enough bright spots and reasons to be optimistic about next year such that Heps can't be viewed as a wash. The team will lose very few point-scorers to graduation, and the stellar freshman class will only get better as time goes by.

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"Normally, at the end of a meet," Ferrell said, "we'll all gather around and coach will have a kind of post-meet meeting to talk about things. This time, instead of that, he just told us, 'Let's go home and get ready for next year.'"