CANYON, TX – The No. 11 Lady Buffs of West Texas A&M track and field break two school records while adding 10 personal best marks between the Jarvis Scott Open in Lubbock, Texas and the David Hemery Valentine Invitational in Boston, Massachusetts on Friday, February 9.
Both meets have stiff competition with competitors coming from TCU, Texas Tech, Harvard, Texas A&M and multiple professional runners.
DAVID HEMERY VALENTINE INVITATIONAL
The distance squad along with a couple of sprinters took on the highly competitive meet in Boston, MA hosted by Boston University. Junior
Raquel Chavez and graduate student
Corrssia Perry both broke school records in their respective events.
Chavez ran the 800-meter in 2:14.02 becoming the fastest Lady Buff to ever do so and putting her name at the top above Kaitlin Rodriguez who held the record (2:14.30) since 2017. Chavez has three of the top-10 WT records in the 800-meter.
Perry, a product of Carrolton, Georgia, ran the best 400-meter indoor time in WT history at 54.11 seconds. Perry broke her own record set last year at 54.41 seconds. She now owns the five out of the 10 top records in the event for WT, including the top four times.
In the top-10 times for WT, there six more Lady Buffs who etched their name into history. In the 5,000-meter all three Lady Buffs that competed made top times with leader
Florance Uwajeneza coming in with her second best time ever at 16:07.37 and placing 29
th out of 104 competitors. Teammates
Betty Bajika and
Elise Leveel also ran top WT times. Bajika is no stranger to making the list having already ran the previous 10
th best time, but now she knocks out her time to come in 8
th best time at 16:51.16. Junior
Elise Leveel etches her first top-10 WT time in fast fashion coming in 9
th all-time at 16:51.91. Uwajeneza still reigns supreme in the event with six of the top-10 times including the top-five.
In the 3,000 meter race,
Eleonora Curtabbi finished 46
th out of 160 competitiors and became fourth fastest in WT history at 9 minutes 21.18 seconds. Freshman
Sarah Koomson ran a personal best 9 minutes and 30.91 seconds to become eighth fastest all-time. Lastly, joining the team on the record board is
Kalkidan Vincendeaux who transferred at semester from Bordeaux, France. She placed 10
th best in the mile at 5:01.90 and bettered her mile time by over 8 seconds.
JARVIS SCOTT OPEN
At the Jarvis Scott Open held at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, TX there were five personal bests in all sprinting events. The heptathletes continued to shine as each of the three,
Laiten Greeson,
Elliot Harrison and
Maryn Noble, has become better in one or more events. Greeson led the team in the 60-meter hurdles going 8.55 seconds and placing 4
th out of 57 competitors. Greeson becomes the fourth fastest WT hurdler since 2017 when Sharon Kwarula or Victoria Rausch had held all top-five records. Harrison placed 13
th in the same event running 8.73 seconds and Noble put two new marks on her best list in the 60-meter hurdles (9.30) and the 60-meter dash (8.05). Hurdler
Taylor Gonzalez also bettered her time to 9.27 seconds.
Freshman
Blessing Akintoye continued to improve in the 400-meter where she broke the 55 second mark to join teammate
Corrssia Perry. Akintoye ran the two lap race in 54.48 seconds and finishing 7
th out of 71 competitors. Akintoye is the 10
th fastest in WT history in the event and second fastest this season behind Perry.
Up Next
WT will return tomorrow for a full slate of events in distance, sprints and field competitions in Lubbock, Texas at the Sports Performance Center and at the Track and Tennis Center in Boston, Ma.
