Ferrell fourth in 3000m at NCAAs

While most Princeton students spent Saturday night putting off studying for the flurry of midterms this week, senior distance runner Cack Ferrell was preparing to test herself against the fastest collegiate athletes in the world.

Ferrell, the lone Princeton representative at the 2006 NCAA Indoor Track and Field championships in Fayetteville, Ark., finished fourth in the 3,000 meters, ahead of all other Ivy League competitors. Ferrell finished in nine minutes, 13.42 seconds, just seven seconds behind the winning pace of Northern Arizona's Johanna Nilsson.

The NCAA championships feature the best collegiate runners in the world. Though all competitors attend American universities, many of the most competitive athletes are international students. At this year's championships, the top two finishers in the 3000m race hail from Denmark and Ireland, respectively.

"It is nerve-wracking looking around in the staging area where the athletes gather to see such a concentration of all-Americans with fast times," Ferrell said. "But I just try not to worry about them and focus on running the race I am prepared to run."

An aggressive strategy

With 20 competitors, the race was particularly large for a championship event. For Ferrell, such a large field meant that her best opportunity for a solid finish was to lead from the start.

"I was a little bit nervous about getting off the line because there were 20 women in the race, which is a rather large field for a national competition where everyone is in contention and therefore likely to all be bunched together for the duration of the race," Ferrell said. "So I got off the line and took the lead to establish the pace that I thought would hold up for a top-five finish."

Ferrell executed this strategy perfectly, holding off all but the strongest competitors in the field. In the final stages of the race, Ferrell was passed by Nilsson, Marry Cullen of Providence and Ari Lambie of Stanford. Both Nilsson and Cullen are fifth-year seniors, a particular advantage in a sport where athletes tend to peak in their late 20s.

Nilsson was one of the favorites heading into the event, having won the NCAA Cross Country championships in the fall and having just coming off a win in the mile a few hours before the start of the 3,000m race. Ferrell finished ahead of fellow Ivy Leaguers Lindsey Scherf of Harvard and Yale's Lindsay Donaldson.

Ferrell's time in the event was her fastest of the season, nearly three seconds better than her qualifying time of 9:16.80. More impressively, Ferrell's time was nearly 11 seconds faster than her performance in the same event at last year's NCAA indoor championships.

With the indoor championships behind her, Ferrell now sets her sights on the upcoming outdoor season, where she hopes to help propel her team to a strong league finish and earn another championship bid to close out her storied career wearing the Orange and Black.