While many students were off campus this weekend to take part in Easter celebrations with families, the Bobcats spent time off campus to run, jump and throw themselves to new heights.
Most of the team traveled to Rock Hill, S.C., to compete in the Winthrop Invitational while Melissa Thompson, Juli Accurso, Morgan Reichert and Kayla Scott took the longest trip of the season to compete in the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto, Calif.
“The goal is to qualify them for the NCAA Championship,” Ohio coach Clay Calkins had said about his distance quadruple before the meet.
Stanford was the only option for the Bobcats to race in a highly competitive meet this season, as many former Olympic and World Cup athletes took to the track.
While only one Bobcat came close to qualifying for the national championship meet, the Bobcats used the competitive surrounding to improve season and personal bests.
Accurso will return to Athens ranked 7th in the nation in the 10,000-meter race, after finishing the race with a time of 33:52.33. The result puts her in a good standing to receive an invitation to the NCAA Championship.
Reichert, in the meantime, finished 30th with a time of 36:05.70.
Thompson ran half of Accurso and Reichert’s distance and finished with a new personal best in a time of 17:05.32, good for 141st nationally.
At, Winthrop, a meet that featured smaller Division I and many Division II schools, the Bobcats won three events.
Senior Danielle Winningham won the 400-meter dash with a personal best of 56.04 seconds, while Tessa Weigland improved her previous personal best by nine seconds to win the event with a time of 4:42.70.
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