In addition, the women sent two women to race in the 5000m, one of whom, junior Carter Hamill, returned to campus with her second national title.
Hamill once again led the team with her exceptional performance in the 5000m race, taking first place, setting a new site record time of 16:46.63 and earning All-American honors for her third year in a row. This marked her second win at Nationals. Hamill won the same race her freshman year and placed sixth during her sophomore year.
Senior tri-captain Aly Venti also gave a strong effort, finishing in 12th place in 18:21.22.
Venti was extremely proud of Hamill's race. "Hamill's performance was incredible," she said. Throughout the race Venti was confident in Hamill's abilities. "Right from the gun she had it, and it was clear from the first lap that she was going to win. She ran really confidently, and it was a fun race to watch."
Hamill also joined first-year Shauneen Garrahan and sophomores Ariel Haney and Ginger Polich a mere 40 minutes later for the DMR.
Hamill ran the opening leg in the women's DMR and while the relay's time topped the site record, the women fell just short of first place, settling for an honorable second place finish and All-American honors.
The quartet came in right behind University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh at 11:52.48. This was the Jeffs' best finish ever, as they also broke the school record.
"Coming back from the 5k like that, Hamill didn't really have a lot of time, so that was really impressive," said Venti.
Venti also commended Haney's performance. "Ariel was actually on crutches that morning from spraining her leg in practice last week, but she ran as good as she's run all season."
The other two women on the team also ran excellent legs. "Ginger ran tremendously and had a strong end of her season. In the last leg, Shauneen was running against some of the best milers of the season and her performance was incredible," said Venti.
The men's DMR team came in a close sixth place, securing All-American honors. Senior tri-captain Janak Chandrasoma along with juniors Dave Molina, Mike Page and Jack Morgan collaborated to edge out the University of Chicago by less than a second.
"The guys' race was very competitive, said Venti. "There were only eight seconds separating the first seed from the last seed. Dave really fought hard during the race as the first leg although it was very closely packed. Janak ran a solid leg."
Venti attributed much of the relays' success to Morgan. "Jack also ran a great leg. It was probably one of the breakthrough legs of the race since he moved the relay team up three places. Finally, Page caught someone right at the finish line to get sixth place, which was exciting," she said.
The track team expects positive results as they move their meets outdoors for the spring season. Although they may be small in number, they anticipate being considerable in effort and performance.
"We'll still be a small team but what we do have is very competitive and we expect to send some runners to nationals again," said Venti.
"We might send a couple of people to Penn Relays, which is a very competitive meet. Hopefully we'll have one whole meet on our track so people can come watch."
This Saturday, the men's and women's teams will travel to New London, Conn. where the teams will run their first outdoor meet of the spring season at Connecticut College.
"Everyone who raced at Nationals will not really be racing because we are still taking our time off, but this will be a good first meet for returning runners coming off of winter sports seasons," commented Venti.