While the Boston University indoor track teams wrapped up their seasons at the Reggie Lewis Athletic Center, the big news of the weekend came when Rachel Felton qualified for the mile run at the NCAA Championships in Fayetteville, Ark.
Felton clocked in with a scorching time of 4:45:49 in the trial heat and, as a graduate student at BU in only her third year of eligibility, did qualify for the NCAA Championships, but narrowly missed the ECAC finals last weekend with a trial run that put her in 11th place.
“We’re quite excited,” said BU coach Bruce Lehane. “It’s quite an accomplishment.”
It was certainly a good way to close out the indoor season for the Terriers and the teams will now take some time off to prepare for the upcoming outdoor season.
Lehane is optimistic about the spring competitions, saying, “Our athletes have improved over the year.”
As usual, the men shined in the pentathlon, the 35-pound weight throw and the 4×400 meter relay. Brian Irwin could not match his school record pentathlon score posted at the New England Championships, but still had a strong effort, finishing sixth overall.
Senior weight thrower B.J. Gary came into the IC-4A Championships with hopes of scoring high enough to propel him into the NCAA Indoor Championships, but Gary would come up short, placing seventh in the weight throw.
The 4×400 relay team that took first place at the New England Championships was shuffled a bit by BU coach Pete Schuder. Eugene Roundtree ran the anchor leg in the IC-4As, swapping places with Chris Brandon. The team could not duplicate their first-place finish, but ended up in ninth with a time of 3:16.38, just .08 seconds off their first-place time the week before.
The 4×400 relay team’s finish almost did not even make it to the final heat. In the trial round, the Terriers lead runner Sean Clancey was run into by an opposing runner while he was handing off the baton to Steve Deppe. This cost the team several seconds, but the race was reviewed by officials, who decided the foul was serious enough to award BU a spot in the final heat.
In the ECAC Championships, the women’s team avoided any such illegal contact and the Terriers finished an impressive ninth out of 80 teams, led by stellar performances from pole vaulter Andrea Stuermer and distance runners Felton and Alicia Heisel.
Stuermer leaped to a third-place finish in the pole vault with a jump of 12-foot-6. The sophomore from Germany is ranked 20th in the nation and just missed the cut for the national championships.
Heisel had a great performance in the 5,000-meter run with a time of 16:53. Lehane had plenty of praise for Heisel, a former walk-on, now a senior.
“She’s come a long way,” Lehane said. “It’s been a lot of fun to see her transform herself over the years. She’s a self-made woman.”
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