Considering the fact that so many of the Red Storm’s key athletes were banged up for the year, the fact that they finished their season placing better than two-thirds of the competition at the ECAC Outdoor Championships on May 16 is a major accomplishment.
“I think we showed dramatic improvements from a year ago,” head coach Jim Hurt said. “This year we had a couple of key injuries that kept us from making the noise that we really wanted to. Had the injuries not occurred, we could have had a much better year.
What injuries were the coach referring to? Well for starters, there were injuries to short distance runner Alecia Sewell, short jumper Julie Georges, and thrower Grace Zollman.
“Without these guys we lost about 26-30 points in every event,” Hurt said. “If you add on these points to our score totals, then we could have easily been in the top three in the Big East.”
While the team as a whole did well, there were two performers, Blessing Egwu and Kerrian Stewart, who stood out from the pack as major contributors.
Stewart won the 100m at the ECAC Outdoor Championships and the 400m at the Big East Championships on May 8. Egwu took home the Big East title for the hammer throw.
Egwu and Stewart, who is a short distance runner, will both be trying out for their respective national teams of Nigeria and Jamaica.
Overall the Red Storm’s did well both on the track and off of it.
The women’s track and field team collectively had a 3.24 grade-point-average and will be an NCAA All-Academic team for the second year in a row.
As well as the team did this year, Hurt already has his eyes fixated upon improving next year’s squad.
“Overall our team is going to be that more solid,” Hurt said.
Added Hurt: “A lot of our kids are going to return, and we are really only losing Kerrian, and although she is a big loss, we are going to have some veteran experience. We finally have a large group of upper-class athletes. The only thing we can hope is that we can get the injuries behind us.”
Considering the fact that so many of the Red Storm’s key athletes were banged up for the year, the fact that they finished their season placing better than two-thirds of the competition at the ECAC Outdoor Championships on May 16 is a major accomplishment.
