SHUHEI MATSUO
Sports Assistant
The newly-formed Pepperdine women’s track team keeps improving in every meet. The Waves traveled to Azusa to compete in the Azusa Pacific University Meet of Champions Saturday, and three Waves registered personal records.
Saturday was a personal-record day for freshman runners on the team. Freshman Crystal Brown competed in the 100-meter dash to set a new personal and school record for the first-year program with a 14.26 clocking.
Freshman distance runners Brieanna Carroll and Ashley Burt also posted their personal records when they turned in times of 4:58.06 and 5:37.22 in their 1500-meter race, respectively.
Not only did Carroll post her personal record at this meet, but she also made a new school record for the 1500-meter, breaking five minutes in the just-under-four-lap race.
“I feel really good because I came a long way over the season,” Carroll said. “It was hard, but it was so cool especially at the end of the season, you know, you want all your hard work to go into something like breaking your own record.”
And that happened to her at Saturday’s meet.
Other freshmen Courtney Smith, Julia Ann Frudden and Marissa Kerby ran in the 800-meter and respectively posted times of 2:36.93, 2:39.47 and 2:49.45.
Freshmen were not the only runners who posted impressive times. Sophomore Lauren Carfioli also participated in the 800M race and turned in the team’s best finishing time, 2:31.14, to finish in the 17th place overall. Junior Kyla Maher was not far off Carfioli, finishing in 2:32.97.
Carfioli said she enjoyed running at Saturday’s meet since it was the first one in the past three weeks.
“It was fun because we got to see our hard work has paid off,” she said.
Despite her impressive performance Saturday, Carifioli’s focus is already on the upcoming meet this Friday.
“I ran OK, but I’m hoping my times will go down this week,” she said.
The team will participate in two more meets after this Friday’s Long Beach Invite. However, assistant coach Robert Radnoti said his team ends its first season in Long Beach on Friday.
Carroll described this incident unusual in track.
“We need to look at any other team schedule: it’s not going to match up with they actually did,” Carroll said. “I mean, track is really an unorganized sport and meets are cancelled, meets are added; you know, you get invited to a different meet and you go.”
Although her season will end shorter than it was scheduled, she said it’s actually good for Pepperdine runners due to upcoming dead and finals weeks. Also, she said she does not feel confident enough about the team to run for the post season yet.
“We are young,” Carroll said. “We are not trying to go to the conference, the regional or the nationals right now.”
After she is done with the track season Friday, her main sport, cross country, is waiting in the fall.
“Track means a whole lot, too for a cross-country runner,” Carroll said. “I never did track in high school so it was always a little bit of a disadvantage because I didn’t have the phase of competing throughout the spring season and you go into the fall, you haven’t competed through the whole year.”
But this track season has provided her a whole spring-worth of competition and training.
“For any cross-country runner, a track season is a really valuable season to get ready for cross country [because] it’ll get you ready to train for summer and to compete in the cross-country season,” she said. “It’s been really, really good for me.”
04-13-2006
