Posted on April 23, 2007
For the men on JMU’s 2007 Outdoor Track and Field squad, Friday and Saturday’s meet marked the last time that most of them will likely run in a JMU jersey.
While the women will still be able to compete as JMU athletes next year, they will lose an intregal part of their team as they will no longer be able to compete beside their male counterparts that they have grown close to over the last few years.
The Women’s Track and Field team finished in fifth place at the Colonial Athletic Association championships, while the men finished in seventh place. Although the women will be competing next year at full strength, that does not mean that they will still feel as strong as they have in years past.
“The boys are a big part of our team, we train with them, travel with them, and they are just an entertaining group of people to be around. They are like our brothers and it’s like we are going to lose half of our team next year,” junior distance runner Gina Casella said.
JMU’s women were lead by a strong group of throwers, finishing second and fourth in the shot put. Sophomore Jennifer Wade finished second in the event, destroying her own school record by over a meter with a heave of 14.93 meters. Classmate Rebecca Eisenhauer placed fourth with a throw of 12.69 meters.
The men also had strong performances in the throwing events, mostly coming from junior Doron White with a third place finish of 46.07 meters in the discus throw, as well as a fourth place finish of 45.32 meters in the hammer throw. White still has one year of eligibility remaining and doesn’t plan on wasting it.
“Next year I plan to compete unattached at meets and help out with the women’s track team,” White said.
The men’s team got their next best performances from their distance runners in the 10,000 meter event, which was run on Friday night. They scored eight points in the event, coming from Bryan Buckland in fifth place, Andrew Waring in sixth place, and Tim Young in eighth place.
Both Buckland and Waring qualified for the IC4A’s National race, which will be held in three weeks. Buckland has tried to qualify for the race 3 times before, narrowly missing the qualification twice.
“It’s a relief to qualify,” Buckland said, “The two [previous] times I’ve tried to qualify for the race I’ve missed it by less then a second.”
Waring, who also qualified for the national race, had a different history with the event. His previous best 10,000-meter time on the track was 31 minutes, 42 seconds. Friday he dropped 31 seconds to qualify for the national event.
“The goal all season has been to qualify for IC4As. All of our workouts have been with that in mind and to get used to running that pace. What you have to do in a 10k is find your rhythm and keep it as long as you can.” Waring said.
Waring and Buckland certainly found their rhythm in the race and kept with it long enough to score points for the Dukes and qualify for further competition.
The women also competed well in the 10,000-meters with four runners all in the mix of the things. They had Holly Fredericksen finish fourth, Elaina Orphanides finish seventh, Gina Casella finish tenth, and Kelly Payne finish fourteenth, to combine for 6 points.
“It takes a lot of mental toughness to run that race, when you see the lap count at 20 laps left you want to quit, but you just have to dig in and get through it, and when you finish it is more than worth it,” Orphanides said.
Another of the women’s top performances came from LaVonne Ellerbe who ran the 400-meter hurtles event in 62.83 seconds to place second.
“I feel really good because I wasn’t doing very well at the beginning of the season, but it all came together at the end of the spring, and I’m glad that I had my best performance at a home meet,” Ellerbe said.
James Madison’s women finished second and fifth, to score 12 points in the event.
Jessica Nauta, a sophomore who finished fifth in the event had personal records in five of the seven events in which she competed in during the heptathlon.
“The hardest event in the heptathlon is the 800 meters, which they save for the end of the competition,” Nauta said. “It’s nobody’s favorite event, but today I lowered my personal record by four seconds, so it served me well.”
While not providing the bulk of scoring for the men’s and women’s teams, the Madison freshman ran well during CAA meet.
One of the top men’s freshman competitors was 800-meter runner Sam Horn, who ran the preliminaries on Saturday. While Horn failed to qualify for the finals, he ran a steady time of 1:56.27.
Horn is planning to transfer to either the University of Maryland, or George Mason.
