By David Konowitch, news correspondent
As the regular season winds down, the Northeastern track and field team competed at the David Hemery Valentine Invitational hosted by Boston University last weekend.
The two-day event had the women compete on Friday and the men compete on Saturday.
NU continued its drive toward the postseason with 34 athletes reaching qualifying standards for the New England Championships and the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IC4A) Championships for the women and the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championships for the men.
The Huskies also had six athletes set personal bests and 10 athletes finish in the top 10 of their events. This highly competitive invitational routinely has over 100 competitors in individual events.
The women’s team’s most impressive performance came in the 3000-meter race, in which three distance runners had personal bests and hit top qualifying standards. Sophomores Lucy Young and Jordan O’Dea and freshman Kerri Ruffo completed the event in 9:37.20, 9:46.75 and 9:55.83, respectively. The three times were all top-five in NU history.
The women were strong again in the throws, with junior thrower Alexandra Rose finishing sixth and setting a personal best in the weight throw with a toss of 16.75 meters. Junior thrower Jenna Serunian added a heave of 12.80 meters in the shot put, earning ninth place.
Junior vaulter Jacilyn Briggs contributed a fourth-place finish in the pole vault, clearing the bar at 3.80 meters.
For the men, freshman hurdler Jordan Samuels continued his impressive season, finishing fifth in the 60-meter hurdles in a personal best time of 8.14 seconds. Senior hurdler Jared Lane chipped in an eighth-place finish at 8.28 seconds.
The 60-meter dash had four Huskies place in the top 20 with less than one second separating the pack. Sophomore sprinter Kyle Darrow led the way, finishing 10th in 6.99 seconds.
Sophomore middle distance runner Paul Duffey finished 17th in the mile and set a personal best by completing the race in 4:02.10. Duffey is now the fifth-fastest mile-runner in NU history. Graduate student distance runner John Schilkowsky ran the mile in 4:06.74 to become the 11th all-time fastest NU runner.
Darrow was the lone first-place winner for the Huskies, taking the long jump with a leap of 7.54 meters.
The Huskies continue their final push this week at the USA Track and Field New England Championships hosted by Harvard University on Sunday, Feb. 22.
Photo courtesy Northeastern University Athletics
