Ahndraea Allen has been named The Northeastern News Player of the Week after she collected 30 points for the women’s track team, winning the 55, 200 and 400 meters and helped the Huskies bring home their sixth America East championship in the past 11 years.
She was named the AE Most Outstanding Track Performer for 30-point performance, a title not at all unfamiliar to Allen. She earned the same title last year in both the indoor and outdoor meets.
The junior also continued her tear through the Northeastern record books with a 200 time of 24.15 seconds, breaking the previous meet and school marks. The new 200 record will fit nicely alongside her records in the 400, as well as 4 x 200, 4 x 400 and 4 x 800 relay teams. Oh, and those records in the 200 and 400 are also the best marks in the history of the America East conference.
Allen made her mark early, and in dramatic fashion in her first race as a Husky. She wasnt able to make it to an open-meet early in the 200 season at The Reggie Lewis Center, and coach Sherman Hart wanted Allen to shake out some rust, seeing as she hadn’t run competitively in a year.
“I did something crazy, I put her in a 400 in the men’s meet because she was taking a test and couldn’t come for the women’s [race]. And she ran that so well, I said ‘Oh my God, this girl can run a quarter.'”
So did she beat any of the men?
“All of them except for one,” he said. “She kind of liked burning up the men.”
Allen had originally planned to give up track coming out of Roselle Park High School in New Jersey and attend Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy. She eventually changed her mind, but was too late in applying to Northeastern to register for day classes or qualify for student housing. For the first half of the year Allen lived with Hart’s sister-in-law in Mattapan and attended night classes at University College.
Despite her high school pedigree as a sprinter, Hart sees the greatest potential for Allen in the middle distances.
“She came in as a 55 and 200 runner, but when I was watching her in practice she would just eat them up alive and her recovery time was so short that we ended up moving her to a 400, which is a very tough event to learn,” he said. “Her improvement was tremendous, I don’t know too many people that can move that quickly up to the 400 from 200 and be a star at it instantly.”
Hart thinks he can stretch it even further after seeing Allen’s performance in the 4 x 800 relay at the Penn. Relays. Running the 800 for the first time in her college career, Allen blazed through the opening leg and led the Husky team of Amy Hicks, Kate Jones, and Joane Merlain to a new school record of 9:00.74.
“I think that Ahndraea truly could be on the national level, maybe even the world level in the 800,” Hart said. “[In the Penn race] she ran a 2:12 [split time], and she didn’t even know what she was doing. You have college athletes that will never run 2:12, and she was just fooling around, running in the back until she said, ‘OK, let me just sprint by 20 people.’ And this was at the Penn. relays in front of 40,000 people. That was her first 800, so she has all the attributes to be a half-miler.”
Confident his squad would win the New England Championships; Hart is holding the team back in order to try to become the first team from the Northeast ever to win an ECAC championship.
Allen will compete in the ECAC hoping to bring her 400 time, currently at 53.91, down far enough to qualify for the NCAA championship, which invites the top 16 competitors from around the currently. Allen’s time puts her in the 18th spot.
“I’m going to run a low 53, hopefully a 52,” predicted Allen, times that will virtually guarantee her a spot in the country’s premier track event.
— Peter Conroy, News Staff
