Our team has been in finals all week taking them before we departed for UMASS (Amherst, MA) who serves as our host for the 2010 Atlantic 10 Conference Championships. Finals continue through Saturday for the general UR student population but our track & field athletes have finished early. On one hand that’s tough because they had to move up their tests and on the other hand, now that we are on our way they are happy to be finished with tests and classes. For our seniors…Jasmine Cottle, Alyssa Mankin, Megan Ney, Heather Roush, JoAnna Ubiwa, Chris Eccleston and Garrett Graham it was the last undergraduate final ever. Hard to imagine they have been here 4 years…It goes by too quickly! I’m sure their parents are thinking the same thing.
We’ll arrive to our hotel about 11:30PM and have a shake-out day scheduled for tomorrow that includes sleeping in; something our team has not done for an entire semester with 7:30AM practices. We’ll head to the track around noon tomorrow before returning to our hotel for dinner. Competition begins at 9:00AM on Saturday (see schedule link below).
The weather forecast doesn’t matter because our team will deal the hand that’s dealt them…but it is supposed to be in the mid 80’s on Saturday and around 80 on Sunday during the competition. That’s a far cry from the 40 degree rain we saw 2 years ago. It was actually good for our distance runners but tougher for our sprinters and jumpers to warm-up properly. So, we’ll see how the weather plays a role this year. We are expecting a lot of wind since the UMASS track is in the middle of an open field and is unprotected.
Until tomorrow…read the press release and watch the video preview from our Sports Information Office posted on our website (see below).
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Track & Field Readies for A-10 Championship This Weekend at UMass
The meet begins Saturday morning, with live video streaming available all weekend.
by Mike DeGeorge
UR Sports Information
April 29, 2010
AMHERST, Mass. - The Richmond track & field team heads to Massachusetts this weekend for the 14th annual Atlantic 10 Outdoor Championship hosted by the Minutemen at the UMass Track & Field Complex in Amherst.
The Championship commences Saturday at 8:45 a.m. with the women's heptathlon. On Sunday, the men's decathlon kicks off the final day of competition at 8:45am.
Live audio and video streaming of the two-day Championship is available for $7.95. Click the links below for live video coverage of the Championship.
Meet Information:
• Schedule of Events
• Watch Day 1 Live!
• Watch Day 2 Live!
• Richmond School Records
Redshirt junior Matt Llano, who did not compete during the 2009 Outdoor season so he could redshirt, has raced once in 2010 as he prepares for the championship portion of the Spiders' schedule. The Broadneck, MD native posted the A-10's fastest of the season in the 10,000m at the Stanford Invitational (28:51.69) and holds the 7th fastest time in the NCAA.
Also among the conference leaders on the men's side is senior Chris Eccleston, who set a school record in the modern javelin with his toss of 198'10" at the George Mason Invitational in March. He ranks second in the A-10 heading into the weekend.
Junior Tim Quinn brings the league's fourth-fastest 5,000m time to Massachusetts after running a 14:36.60 at William & Mary in early April. Senior Garrett Graham was clocked with the league's fourth-fastest 3,000m steeplechase of the season (9:16.34 at Princeton).
The men's sprinters will be aided by five members of the football team set to compete this weekend - Justin Rogers, Tremayne Graham, Darrian Carmichael, Michael Parker and Jon Thompson. At last year's A-10 Championship, Rogers, Graham, Seth Williams and Jordan Mitchell crushed the school record in the 4x100m relay (41.20).
On the women's side, a number of Spiders rank among the A-10 leaders this season including overall top marks by senior Megan Ney (long jump) and senior Heather Roush (javelin).
Ney posted her A-10-leading long jump mark of 5.84m at William & Mary, and also ranks high with the league's third-best high jump (1.65m) and third-best triple jump (12.02m - which also stands as a school record). She ranks 11th-fastest in the 200m dash (25.63).
Roush owns the league's best javelin mark thanks to her toss of 43.39m at VCU. She also ranks eighth in the discus (42.04m) heading into the Championship.
Senior Amy Van Alstine recorded the league's second-fastest 5,000m at the Mt. SAC Relays in mid-April (16:38.58), while freshman Dana Guglielmo brings the conference's third-fastest 3,000m steeplechase time to UMass (10:44.72).
Stay tuned to RichmondSpiders.com for complete coverage of the A-10 Championship.
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