Indoor track provides a springboard for CAAs
Multiple individual school records already broken as outdoor track looms
Posted on February 28, 2008
While most JMU students will be at home or traveling to a tropical destination during the first week of March this year, the women’s track team will be training in Harrisonburg for the Eastern College Athletic Conference championships, which take place in Boston from March 7-8.
But when the rest of campus returns, JMU’s top athletes will be gearing up for the outdoor track season. With the indoor season winding down, there is already reason to anticipate team success during the more competitive outdoor season.
“Indoor has been a great start to our season and we’re really looking forward to outdoor track and competing for the conference championship,” JMU coach Kelly Cox said.
Since the start of 2008, James Madison has had four school records broken, and many more girls have improved upon their personal records.
Junior Tanique Carter broke the JMU record this year in the 60- and 200-meter dash, with times of 7.51 and 24.81 seconds, respectively. She has set the record in both events multiple times this season.
School records have also been set this winter by junior Christine Nicewonger in the pentathalon (3,566 points) and junior Rebecca Eisenhauer in the weight throw (54’ 6 1/3”), while junior Jessica Wade tied her school record of 45’, 3 1/2” in the shot put, a mark she originally set in February 2007.
The four record-setting Dukes have all qualified individually for the ECAC championships, as well as junior Leslie Anderson in the 200- and 400-meter dash. The distance medley relay and 4x400-meter relay teams also qualified for the Boston event. The ECAC meet takes place one week after JMU travels to New York City for the NYU Fast Track Invitational at the Armory on Friday.
“I wasn’t planning on having this much success in the 60 (meters),” Carter said. “Every time I look at the results I see that everyone else is carrying their weight and surprising themselves as well.”
Bill Walton, the sprints and hurdles coach, attributes this team’s success to its strong group of veterans, a consistent two week training cycle, and the decision by the women to set goals and accept the necessary workload.
“They’ve got to be willing to do the work and make the sacrifices if they want to accomplish their goals,” Walton said. “This has been a special group, and like I said they have accepted the work ethic.”
With the well-balanced group of girls on the team this year, winning the outdoor CAA championships in April seems like a goal that is within reach. The team has a deep squad of girls that can put points on the board in each area of events, with no glaring weakness that would keep them from doing well at the conference championships.
“It’s exciting to have such a complete team and to see everyone working so well together,” Cox said. “We are performing well both individually and as a group.”
