By: Erin Madden
BEREA, Ohio – Members of the Baldwin Wallace University women's indoor track and field teams competed at a pair of NCAA Last Chance meets.
Each student-athlete competed in order to obtain or improve upon a qualifying mark to the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field Championships next week.
At the Tufts (Mass.) University Final Qualifier, senior All-Ohio Athletic Conference and Academic All-OAC thrower Brooke Buckhannon (Collins/Western Reserve) had the day's best result for the Yellow Jackets with a runner-up finish in the weight throw with a mark of 54 feet, 2 inches.
On the track, sophomore All-OAC distance runner Alyssa Laughner (Howard, Pa./Central Mountain) and senior three-time All-American distance runner Kelly Brennan (Akron/Walsh Jesuit) each notched a fourth-place finish with Laughner racing to a career-best time of 17:39.63 in the 5,000-meter run and Brennan turning in a time of 5:01.55 in the 1-mile run. In the 800-meter run, freshman distance runner Hailey Borges (Brunswick) placed 11th in a time of 2:30.15. Junior All-OAC and Academic All-OAC distance runner Madison Kile (North Canton/Hoover) finished the 1-mile run in 5:30.54 for 12th place. Both junior All-OAC distance runner Hastings Marek (Pataskala/Watkins Memorial) and junior distance runner Molina Otte (Omaha, Neb./Millard West) finished back-to-back in 3,000-meter run with Marek coming in 12th in 10:33.75 and Otte in 13th in 10:41.72.
Over in Ada at the Polar Bear Final Qualifier, hosted by Ohio Northern University, senior All-OAC and Academic All-OAC thrower Jillian Roberts (Broadview Heights/Brecksville-Broadview Heights) moved up the shot put national rankings with a career-best mark of 44'7.5" to place second, which currently ranks 16th in Division III at the time of the meet. Senior All-OAC and Academic All-OAC distance runner Katie Fowler (Mount Vernon) also had her own runner-up finish in the 800-meter run with a career-best time of 2:23.49.
The Yellow Jackets will now wait and see which athletes qualify to the 2020 NCAA Division III Indoor National Championships, hosted Friday and Saturday, March 13-14 at the JDL Fast Track in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
