UVA Women Finish Fourth at ACC Championships
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May 15, 2016
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla.–The Virginia women’s track and field team finished fourth at the ACC Outdoor Championships, its highest finish since 2013, Sunday (May 15) at Mike Long Track in Tallahassee, Fla.
The Cavaliers finished fourth with 77 points, behind champion Florida State (106.50), Miami (88) and Clemson (85). Notre Dame was fifth (69), followed by Duke (66), NC State (56), Louisville (47), Virginia Tech (45.1), North Carolina (42.4), Syracuse (33), Wake Forest (30), Pitt (29), Boston College (26) and Georgia Tech (19).
“Our women came in on paper in about seventh or eighth and we finished fourth with some valiant efforts,” UVA director of track and field Bryan Fetzer said. “We talked a lot about Leicester City winning the English Premier League and doing the things that no one else thought we could do and we had a lot of individuals that did the unexpected. It was a great building block for the program.”
Junior Cleo Boyd (Kingston, Ontario) became the first Virginia runner to win the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters at the conference outdoor meet, winning the 5K in 16:31.65. Boyd is the first ACC woman to sweep the distance events since Anna Nosenko of Wake Forest in 2010.
“Winning the both the five and 10K felt amazing,” Boyd said. “It has been a long road for me to get to this point and winning at a big championship meet like this has been a dream for most of my running career, so making it a reality has been so satisfying and given me a lot of confidence for the rest of the season.”
“It was an amazing weekend for Cleo, very impressive,” UVA distance coach Todd Morgan said. “To win two events in this conference is no easy feat. I am really proud of her.”
“Cleo winning the double was fantastic and it says a lot about her and what she did for the team points,” Fetzer said.
The Cavaliers gained 14 points in the 400m hurdles, with graduate student Aisha Naibe-Wey (London, England) junior Heather Smith (Chesapeake, Va.) finishing second and third, respectively. Naibe-Wey’s time of 57.84 and Smith’s time of 58.17 rank fourth and fifth on UVA’s all-time list.
The 4x100m relay Smith, junior Andrea Wright (Chesapeake, Va.), senior Peyton Chaney (Belleville, Ill.) and junior Tori McKenzie (Chatham, Va.) finished fifth in 45.21, which is the fifth-best time in school history.
The 4x400m relay of junior Chimere Ezumah (Gardena, Calif.), Chaney, Naibe-Wey and Wright placed fifth in 3:38.59.
“Today those young ladies executed the race plan perfectly,” UVA assistant coach Willie Randolph said. “Finishing second and third felt like a win because it was great progress. To score for their team was the goal and I’m extremely proud of them.”
Junior Christine Bohan (Avon Lake, Ohio) scored for the third time this meet, finishing sixth in the discus with a personal-best mark of 47.22m (154′ 11″).
Chaney finished sixth in the 200 meters in 23.72.
Freshman Carly Feyerabend (Mechanicsville, Va.) placed eighth in the high jump, clearing a PR of 1.69m (5′ 6.5″).
Senior Jessica Caldwell (Owings Mills, Md.) qualified for the finals of the triple jump and placed ninth with a mark of 12.21m (40′ 0.75″).
In the 1,500 meters final, graduate student Sarah Astin (Isle of Man, Great Britain) placed 10th in 4:33.83.
The meet also signified the women’s outdoor track and field matchup between Virginia and Virginia Tech in the Commonwealth Clash, sponsored by Virginia529, the official college savings plan of University of Virginia Athletics. By way of finishing higher in the team standings, UVA earned one point in the Virginia529 Commonwealth Clash, the point rivalry series between UVA and Virginia Tech. Virginia has clinched the 2015-16 Commonwealth Clash and leads, 13-7. Learn more about Virginia529 and this competition at thecommonwealthclash.com.
Up next, the Cavaliers compete at the NCAA East Preliminaries in Jacksonville, Fla., May 26-28.