TOWSON, Md. – The Towson University women's track and field team is ranked fifth in the United States Track and Field Cross-Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) seventh weekly Mid-Atlantic Regional Outdoor Track & Field Index for the second consecutive week.
Towson had a solid showing at last weekend's ECAC Championships at Princeton. The Tigers were second overall with 73 points, their highest finish in program history.
Towson's 4 x 100-meter relay team of
Shamika Burton,
Arianna Waller,
Liz Reid and
Crystal Johnson won its race in a school record 45.40 seconds. Additional ECAC event champions were
Michella Obijiaku (shot put) and
Phontavia Sawyer (discus).
Towson's medalists included Reid (400), Johnson (100, 200),
Hayley Horvath (pole vault) and the 4 x 400-meter relay of Reid, Waller,
Helnsarah Penda and
Alexandria Kitchell.
Women's track was well represented with honorees during its annual Golden Paws Awards banquet as Johnson (Female Rookie of the Year), Reid (Female Senior Achievement Award) and Obijiaku (Female Record Breaking Achievement) were feted.
The Tigers are ranked in the top 75 of the weekly event winners in the hammer throw (19th), discus (23rd), pole vault (41st), 400-meter hurdles (45th), high jump (61st), shot put (64th), 100 (64th) and 100-hurdles (75th).
EventSquad rankings places a rank order to a program's "squad" of athletes in a particular event, using the cumulative season-best qualifying marks from a team's top-four ranked athletes on the national descending-order list.
Already this outdoor season, Reid, Johnson, Horvath, Sawyer, Obijiaku along with the 4 x 100 and 4 x 400-meter relay teams have set school records. Johnson earned CAA Track Athlete of the Week on March 19, April 8 and 22. Horvath was named CAA Field Athlete of the Week on April 1 and 8.
In the latest NCAA women's East Region performance list, Obijiaku is 22nd in the shot put, Horvath is 23rd in the pole vault, Francis is 27th in the 400-meter hurdles and Sawyer is 36th in the discus.
The top 48 athletes in each event as well as the top 24 relay teams qualify for the NCAA Division I East Preliminary Round, which will be held the weekend of May 23-25 at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida. Official qualifiers and event participants will be announced later this week.
