Brown’s Josie Natrasevschi had quite a Penn Relays collegiate debut. On Friday, she competed in the College Women Discus Throw Championship where she was the only Ivy representative. On her final throw of the competition, she unleashed a toss of 183-08 that jumped her into the champion position, but also reset the conference record. She is the first Ivy athlete to ever win this event at the Penn Relays AND (from our research) the first ever Brown athlete to win a watch or a wheel at the Penn Relays. This is the second time that she’s broken the Ivy League record this year in this event.
HepsNation did get three event wins on Friday, one of which belongs to an alumnus. Out in the field, Yale’s Brendan Sullivan claimed the College Men Pole Vault College division win with 16-06 3/4 (just shy of his season’s best). John Gregorek, who graduated from Columbia last year and is finishing up his eligibility at Oregon, ran the 1200m leg for the Oregon Ducks in the College Men Distance Medley Relay Championship of America. Although his former team Columbia where the leaders at the end of the 1200m and 800m legs, Oregon was able to use their golden-gun Edward Cheserek on the anchor leg to pass by Columbia’s Rob Napolitano with 250 meters to go and win the event, giving Gregorek a watch and wheel. Columbia would end up in 5th place, as the quartet of Brendon Fish, Kevin Boyd, Connor Claflin, and Napolitano ran 9:38.23. The other event win belonged to Harvard, as they won their College Women 4×100 ECAC final subsection with a time of 46.05. The winning quartet consisted of Ashley Collinsworth, Jade Miller, Christi Scott, and Danielle Barbian. The time was the fastest for any of the Ivies competing in the 4×100 finals, as Cornell’s team of Adrian Jones, Udeme Akpaete, Zena Kolliesuah, and Katie Woodford ran 46.13 to finish 3rd in the College Women 4×100 College subsection, and Penn’s team of Lydia Ali, Taylor McCorkle, Taylor Hennig, and Candace Taylor ran 46.74 to finish 4th in the ECAC subsection.
Another major Friday highlight include all six Ivy men 4×400 squads into Saturday’s finals. Brown, Penn, and Dartmouth qualified for the College Men 4×400 College final subsection after going 1-2-3 in the College Men 4×400 Heptagonal heat. Brown won the heat in 3:13.80, a season’s best for the quartet. Penn and Dartmouth ran 3:14.95 and 3:16.16, respectively. These three will run on Saturday at 5:40pm. Meanwhile, Columbia (3:16.21), Princeton (3:16.58), and Cornell (3:17.76) made it into the College Men 4×400 IC4A final subsection that will be run on Saturday at 5:55pm.
And big shout out to the Penn Track Alumni 4×100 Relay squad – David Allison, Gabby Yearwood, Beau Ances, and Hepstrack contributor Kelsey Armstrong – who finished 7th in the Master’s 4×100 40+ division with a time of 52.43. Now I only can hope I can still sprint when I hit your age…
Meanwhile, other top performances on Friday include:
Penn Relays action concludes tomorrow – follow it online through live results, Twitter, or paid web stream on Flotrack. If you happen to get the NBC Sports Network, there will be live coverage tomorrow beginning at 12:30pm.
photo by Steve Raurk