Senior Elisabeth Plympton has been named the PrestoSports SUNYAC Indoor Track Athlete of the Week, which makes this the sixth time she has been named the title in her career.
“It’s definitely going to help her out. I made her work pretty hard last week to get prepared for the championship portion of the season. We worked hard that week yet she ran the best she has run so far this season,” head track and field coach Nick Jones said.
Graduate student Kallie Villemaire, senior Brianna Coon, junior Janyll Barber and senior Andrew Horan along with Plympton have been named Athlete of the Week this season. Jones said this is the highest amount of selection in a season.
Jones said it took some time for the team to transition from cross country to track and field but the Cards are coming along now. He said the teams started to see some drops in their performances and hitting the qualifying marks for SUNYAC and All-Atlantic Region Track and Field Conference.
The PSU women’s track and field team was ranked first out of 13 teams, with the score of 103 points, while the men’s team was ranked sixth, with the score of 35 points, in the Pioneer Open hosted by Utica College last Saturday.
“We were pretty happy about that ‘cause not every single thing went according to plan, but we got something out of the meet,” Jones said.
The women’s team had 16 individuals hit the SUNYAC qualification marks with three individuals and the 4×400-meter relay team achieved the AARTFC qualification. The men’s team has four hit the SUNYAC qualification marks and one achieved the AARTFC qualification.
For the women’s team, Plympton came in first for the 60-meter dash with the time of 8.00 and topped Utica in the 200-meter dash by two one-thousandths of a second (26.007 – 26.009). She also led the Cards to first place in the 4×400-meter relay along with junior Janyll Barber, senior Taylor Canet and Villemaire, with the time of 4:07.19.
“Highlight of the meet was probably Elisabeth’s [200-meter dash] cause it’s the fifteenth fastest time in the country right now,” Jones said.
Coon won both weight throw and the shot put, with the marks of 14.92 meters (48’ 11.5”) and 12.28 meters (40’ 3.5”) respectively, which earned her the AARTFC qualification.
Canet topped the 800-meter run with a time of 2:27.24, while Villemaire came in second for the 400-meter dash with an AARTFC qualifying time of 1:00.77.
For the men’s team, freshman Jared Davidson finished second in the 600-meter dash with an AARTFC qualifying mark of 7.12. The 4×400-meter relay team of freshman Brendyn Marrero, freshman Cameron Aviles, Montville and senior Andrew Horan charted a season-best time of 3:33.70 to place fourth in the event.
With some of the athletes came back with injuries, Jones hoped they would be able to recover and be ready for the upcoming meet.
“Just minor things that it’s far out from the conference so we can rest them and soon to be prepared for the championship season,” Jones said.
Jones said some of the team train through this week while some took this meet off to be prepared for the upcoming meets. He said the guys that took the meet off looked pretty good during practice and is hoping they will be good to run this upcoming meet.
“We’ve done a lot of workouts so a lot of people are injured. We’ve been training differently, it’s not that we’re not training at all,” junior Mikayla Rossier said.
Sophomore Kristen Boerke said the team visits the trainer and help themselves with exercise and push through it with a positive mindset. Rossier also said the upperclassmen are really helpful when it comes to injuries that need to be fixed right away and the team supports each other throughout.
PSU also competed in the Ithaca College Bomber Invitational where senior Anthony Ciccarelli placed fourth in the pentathlon, achieving the SUNYAC and AARTFC qualification marks with the score of 4005 points.
Boerke and Rossier came in fourth and eighth respectively in the pentathlon, with the score of 2781 and 2233 points respectively. Boerke achieved both the SUNYAC and AARTFC qualification marks while Rossier hit the SUNYAC qualification mark.
“I felt pretty good. I felt very relieved because [achieving SUNYAC and AARTFC qualification marks] are big goals of mine,” Boerke said. “Even though I’m qualified, I still want to improve a lot of my events because there’re so many events in the pentathlon that there’s always room for improvement.”
Boerke currently has the top pentathlon score in the SUNYAC this year. She also met SUNYAC qualification in three of the five component pentathlon events, which are the 60-meter hurdles, the high jump and the long jump, with the score of 10.16, 1.46 meters – 4’ 9.5” and 5.05 meters – 16’ 7” respectively.
Jones said the team will be working on quality workouts with mixing in more recovery than they have done earlier in the season to keep the Cardinals healthy.
“We’ve trained through some of these meets, we’ve trained pretty well and consistently that we need to take some rest,” Jones said.
The Cards will be competing in the Blue and Orange Invitational and Multi hosted by Utica College tomorrow.
