Starting the weekend off for the Jeffs was senior tri-captain Shauneen Garrahan, who was remarkable in each of her three events. In the preliminary round of the mile she had the best performance of the field with a time of 4:56.10.
Next up was the DMR, and each leg contributed lightning fast splits. Caitlin McDermott-Murphy '09 led off with a blistering 3:36 in the 1,200-meter leg before classmate Carly Levenson ran the 400-meter portion in 60.2 seconds. Senior tri-captain Maria Millard sacrificed her spot in the open 800-meter run to be a part of the DMR squad. She took the baton with the team in seventh place, and surged to the fourth position with a 2:13 800 leg. Garrahan's second mile of the day was even better than her first. She steered the team into third place with a 4:54.5 effort. "We were hoping to win it," said Mallard. "You have to go in with that mindset. We all ran our best and as a group we ran a smart race."
The total time of 11:44.91 set a new school record by over seven seconds. For their third-place finish, the women were awarded All-American honors.
On Saturday, Garrahan competed in the finals of the mile, and she took the lead with 400 meters to go. After losing a little momentum, Garrahan dropped to third place but ran her second best mile time ever in 4:51 to receive her second All-American honor of the weekend.
In the 5,000-meter run, Garrahan was in the front pack of five runners. Despite having already raced three sub-five minute miles at the meet, she was able to place second in the 5,000 with time of 16:51.25.
Perhaps the most unheralded story this winter has been the emergence of Elise Tropiano '09 as one of the nation's top long distance runners. She has not had a bad race all season, steadily lowering her times each meet to qualify for her first individual race on the national level. Her debut did not disappoint. Tropiano set another personal record of 17:09.45 en route to a seventh-place finish and All-American honors.
Building off an impressive cross country season-where she raced to seventh individually and led the team to a second-place finish-Heather Wilson '08 had another stellar showing at a national meet. Placing eighth in 17:19.25, Wilson is the only Amherst runner to earn All-American honors in both cross country and indoor track this year.
"The 5K was awesome," said Mallard. "All three girls were All-American. It made me feel proud to be from Amherst."
After a tremendously successful indoor season, the Jeffs hope to carry this momentum into even faster times during the outdoor slate.