TORRANCE, Calif. - The IUPUI women's track and field squad is pegged for a busy weekend with Jaguars competing at four different meets over the coming days. Six Jaguars will run three different meets in California from Thursday (Apr. 19) through Saturday (Apr. 21) while the remainder of the squad will head north to the Al Owens Classic, hosted by Grand Valley State on Saturday (Apr. 21).
IUPUI's West Coast entries will begin on Thursday (Apr. 19) with
Haley Welch running the steeplechase at Azusa Pacific's Bryan Clay Invite, followed by
Shelby Pake and
Katelyn Murphy running 5,000m races. On Friday (Apr. 20),
Amairany Cruz and
Lauren Osterhout will run open 800 races at the Mt. SAC Relays while
Allie Wright will compete in an open 1,500. Welch and Osterhout are also expected to run the 1,500 at Bryan Clay later that night. On Saturday (Apr. 21), all six who made the trip to California will run at the Beach Invitational, hosted by Long Beach State.
Wright has the team's best 800 (2:14.44) and 1,500m (4:41.09) times of the season and Murphy has IUPUI's best 5K of the year at 17:43.84. Welch will be running her first steeple of the season in an effort to shed time from her personal best 11:35.16 from last year's Summit League Championships. Cruz ran a school record 2:11.95 in the 800 on this trip two years ago while Wright ran 4:33.43 in the 1,500 on last year's trip.
In Michigan, a large contingent of Jaguars will have last chance opportunities to post marks heading into the postseason. Sophomore
Rachel Saylor is coming off a personal best 200m time of 27.63 and will run the 200 and 400 this weekend. Senior
Sarah Childs posted a personal best 400m time of 1:02.02 recently and will try to lower that number at Grand Valley. The 800m group is keyed by
Jessica Backherms and
Megan Zajac, both of whom have run 2:22 this season.
Backherms will also run the 1,500 along with
Jean Carson and
Marina Konow, while
Ashley Kidwell and
Kelsey Tyler are among the team's four entries in the 5,000m event. Kidwell ran 18:51.86 at the recent Illinois Twilight while Tyler has run 17:58.11 in the event. Junior
Alexis Lewandowski will run her second steeple of the year this weekend, having clocked a time of 11:52.32 at the Apr. 7 Gibson Invite.
Bailey Webber will run the 400m hurdles where she recently ran a personal best time of 1:09.08. Senior
Beth Parks will have her typical busy day, competing in four events over the course of the meet. Parks will run the 200m dash and 100m hurdles, while also competing in the high jump and long jump. Parks owns school records in three of the events, having registered the program's best marks in the 100m hurdles (17.19), high jump (1.55m, 5'1'') and long jump (4.58m, 15' 0.5'').
A full recap and results of each day's events will be posted to IUPUIJags.com immediately afterwards.
