By Jack Weiland
So what if the Northeastern women’s track team finished fifth out of 45 scoring teams last week at the ECAC Championship track meet, in which national powers like Duke, Georgetown, Seton Hall and Penn State took part?
Coach Sherman Hart is none too pleased with the showing, in which his team finished ahead of Duke and Seton Hall, but fell by 16 points to champ University of Pittsburgh, and was just five points out of second place.
Norheastern, which has never won the meet, was gunning for first, and according to Hart, would’ve taken the trophy if not for an utter collapse in the field events.
“We lose as a team first and foremost, but the runners ran extremely well, and, for some reason, my field event people, with the exception of (Zara Northover), went south. If they did just a little bit of what they’re capable of doing, we actually would have won that meet easily. No Northeast team has ever won it, and we had it right there within our grasp, and we let it go.
“There was no rhyme or reason why they went south for that particular meet,” Hart added. “I just couldn’t understand why all of the sudden they just went south totally on us. That’s what really killed us in the meet. We could’ve won the pole vault and probably had two people in the top five in the high jump. There was just a bunch of stuff that was going on that we should have done much better in. It’s very disappointing because we had it within our grasp, we were right there. The one thing was people said that ‘Yeah, Northeastern is for real.’ But, we really could’ve put ourselves right on top of the map.”
Northeastern’s trio of junior Ahndraea Allen and sophomores Zara Northover and Jordine Kimbrel accounted for 40 of the teams’ 45 points. Allen took second in the 200 (24.2 seconds), and broke her own record in the 400 in winning by more than a second, coming across the line in 53.49 seconds. Northover won the shot put, and Kimbrel earned key points by taking second place in the 60-meter dash and fifth place in the 200.
“We really put the meet on three people on the second day, after the field events had caved in,” Hart said. “We put it on Ahndraea, on Jordine and Zara. They just did a tremendous job. I can’t say enough about (Allen). Another school record goes down, one more time. She was ranked 18th in the country and 18th best collegiate performance in the country this year. And she ran that from start to finish and she ran it with passion because she wasn’t the top seed going in there … but the top-seed actually found out who the top seed was.
“Then, coming back in less than 35 minutes and running the 200. After running the best (quarter-mile) in your life, she didn’t even basically leave the starting line,” he added. “Then to come back and run a 24.2, that was just an incredible performance by her. Zara’s only a sophomore and she goes out there with a passion and she goes out there to win. She knew what was at stake and she took care of business. She told me before the meet that I was going to get 10 from her.”
The meet was doubly disappointing for Allen and Northover, who just missed the cut for the NCAA Championship meet.
“They’re not going to let Ahndraea in,” Hart said. “She’s tied for 18th, but they’re going to take the girl from Miami because she’s already in the meet. They decided to take her because that’s the cheaper way out. They both ran the exact same time, I’ve been arguing with the NCAA all morning.
“They were taking 18 and Zara was 19th,” he added. “So this is just not a good day. It’s very disappointing, but you know what they say about payback. Somebody is going to pay outdoors for this.”
