Results
ST. PAUL, MINN. - With one meet to go in the regular season, the St. Catherine University track and field team went into the Macalester Kilt Classic hoping for strong performances leading up to the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) Indoor Track and Field Championships. Strong performances are exactly what the Wildcats got. The team finished fourth in the standings with 72.5 overall points thanks to big time performances in the sprints, distance races, and field events from multiple athletes.
Rachel Hall (Mendota Heights, Minn.) continued to topple St. Kate's records and top times, this time by setting one of her own. The junior distance runner set a school record in the 1000 meter race with a final time of 3:02.48. The previous record was set in 1995 and stood for 11 years before Hall beat it by three-tenths of a second. In the process of beating the school record, Hall placed second and recorded one of the top times in the MIAC in the 1000 meter race.She already recorded a top-ten time in both the conference and St. Kate's history earlier this indoor season.
Stacey Wherley (Osceola, Wis. / Osceola) continued to impress, leading the Wildcats with a first place finish in the 800m race. Wherley finished the race with a personal best time of 2:32.59, just edging out Maclaester's Amy Pelz by .16 seconds. She set the pace in a race that featured five other St. Kate's distance runners, two of whom finished in the top six. Shannon Strickland (Rochester, Minn. / Lourdes) and Courtney Kirkeide (Greenbush, Minn. / Greenbush-Middle River) finished third and fourth in the race respectively with times of 2:34.64 and 2:36.08.
Kirkeide also recorded a top-10 time in the 1 mile race. She recorded the sixth best time in school history, placing third with a time of 5:30.35.
Several sprinters had season and career best days at the Macalester Kilt Classic, including Shakeela Wells-Johnson (St. Paul, Minn. / Harding) and Brittany Moore (Maplewood, Minn. / North St. Paul). Both Wells-Johnson and Moore made the finals for the 60 meter hurdles, and Moore recorded a season best time of 9.46 in the preliminary rounds. Wells-Johnson recorded her season best time of 9.19 in the finals, finishing second and setting a top-10 St. Kate's time in the process.
Ashleigh Ackley (Gilby, N.D. / Grand Forks Central) set a personal record in the preliminary rounds of the 60meter hurdles. The senior just missed qualifying for the finals with a personal best time of 10.30.
Megan Thoemke placed third in the 400 meter dash behind a season best time of 1:02.89. She finished just tenths of a second behind both the first and second place finishers from Hamline and Macalester.
Several athletes also set personal bests in the field events. Megan Pohlmann (Grey Eagle, Minn. / Long Prairie-Grey Eagle) took fourth in the weight throw behind a personal best throw of 13.36m in the finals. Kaylea Hoenigschmidt (Ramsey, Minn. / Anoka) also recorded a personal record in weight throw with a final distance of 13.12 meters.
In the shot put, Katelyn Byers-Carter (Bloomington, Minn. / Jefferson) placed fifth behind a personal best 9.94 meter throw.
The next time the St. Kate's track and field team will compete will be at the MIAC Indoor Track and Field Championships, hosted by Carleton College. The meet will take place March 3-5 in Northfield, Minnesota. More information about the championship will be available early next week on the
MIAC website.
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