Ohio ran away with 14 top-five finishes at the Youngstown State Invitational on Friday, as many Bobcats surpassed their personal best finishes.
For their sole races, Juli Accurso and Melissa Thompson both won their events. Accurso took the mile at 4 minutes and 51.28 seconds, crossing the finish line two seconds faster than her personal best. Thompson ran the 3K for the first time and won it in a time of 10 minutes and 16.69 seconds.
Two teammates followed Accurso into the top 10. Emily Pifer took fourth and Hope McCarty, beating her personal best by almost 10 seconds, finished eighth.
In the same event as Thompson, three other Bobcats finished in the top 10. Freshman Morgan Reichert finished second and replaced her personal best by almost 10 seconds. Abbie Selhorst and Ashley Waddington finished sixth and seventh, respectively.
Sophomore Allison Stillwell finished second in the 5K with a time of 18 minutes and 9.40 seconds, missing first place by less than a second to Youngstown State’s Anna Pompeo. Lauren Adkins placed fourth in the same event.
For more distance events, a trio of runners finished in the top 10 of the 800 with McCarty taking third, Courtney Weiss finishing right behind McCarty and Erin Gale in ninth.
“It was a solid performance out of all of our distance crew from the 800 all the way up,” coach Clay Calkins said.
In field events, freshman Janiece Rose threw her best shot with 12.72 meters while Kristen Mason also finished in the top 10.
Alexis Geiger placed second in the long jump with 5.42 meters and freshman Serena Warner leaped 1.64 meters to take fourth in the high jump. Mason, Brianna Allen and Lauren McCullough finished fifth, sixth and seventh in the weight throws.
For her first pentathlon, freshman Chanda Cuckler took third place overall with first in the 60-meter hurdles and fourth in the 800-meter, high jump, long jump and shot put.
Overall, Calkins said the meet on the new Youngstown State indoor track was a good chance for the Bobcats to get them ready for the meet next week as well as Mid-American Conference Championships in less than a month.
“All preparation this week will be getting ready for Norte Dame coming up,” Calkins said. “It will be some of the top-notch in the country at the meet.”
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