BEREA, Ohio – A few members of the Baldwin Wallace University women's indoor track and field teams competed at a pair of NCAA Last Chance meets.
Each student-athletes competed in order to obtain a qualifying mark to the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field National Championship meet next week.
At the Tufts (Mass.) Final Qualifier, junior outdoor All-American distance runner Kelly Brennan (Akron/Walsh Jesuit) won the 800-meter run when she crossed the finish line in 2:14.44, which is .41 seconds off her school record time. Senior All-OAC sprinter Grace Nemeth (Medina) took third in the 200-meter dash in a time of 25.78 seconds. Meanwhile, freshman All-OAC hurdler Amanda Milo (Akron/Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy) finished fourth in the 60-meter hurdle finals in 9.10 seconds after posting a time of 9.11 seconds in the preliminaries.
Out in the field, junior All-Ohio Athletic Conference and Academic All-OAC thrower Brooke Buckhannon (Collins/Western Reserve) hit a career-best mark of 54 feet, 2.75 inches to finish third in the weight throw. That toss currently ranks 22nd in the country at the time of meet. Buckhannon also competed in the shot put where she placed when she hit 39'7".
In relay action, the team of junior All-OAC distance runner Bella Pendola (Warsaw/River View), freshman All-OAC distance runner Natalie Vinci (Canton/St. Thomas Aquinas), sophomore All-OAC distance runner Madison Kile (North Canton/Hoover) and Brennan ran a season-best time of 12:08.34 to finish 11th in the distance medley relay. That time currently ranks 21st in the country at the time of the meet with the top 12 teams receiving a bid to the NCAA Championships.
Over at Ohio Northern University at the Polar Bear Last Chance Invite, freshman distance runner Alyssa Laughner (Howard, Pa./Central Mountain) won the 3,000-meter run in a time of 10:33.94 while junior All-OAC and Academic All-OAC distance runner Katie Fowler (Mount Vernon) placed fifth in the 800-meter run in a time of 2:26.44.
The Yellow Jackets will now wait and see which athletes qualify to the 2019 NCAA Indoor National Championships, hosted Friday and Saturday, March 8-9 at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston, Massachusetts.
