University of Richmond Athletics
University of Richmond
Atlantic 10 Indoor Championship
Llano's Gold, Three Women's Silvers Highlight Day One At A-10 Championship
02/19/2010 | Women's Track & Field
Feb. 19, 2010
Men's Results
KINGSTON, R.I. - Senior Matt Llano won the men's 5,000m Friday to lead the University of Richmond Indoor Track & Field team on Day One of the Atlantic 10 Championship at Rhode Island. The women got three silver-medal performances and are fourth, while the men are fifth heading to Saturday's final day.
"I'm pleased with the competitiveness we've shown," said women's head coach Lori Taylor. "We don't have the numbers some of these other teams have, but our younger athletes really competed well for themselves today and many set their personal bests. That doesn't mean we are satisfied. We had a lot of ninth to 12th-places that put us just out of the scoring."
"We had a good day on the men's side," said head men's coach Steve Taylor. "We just don't have the depth and numbers of some of these state schools. Sam (Weber) is doing will in the multi, Garrett (Graham) made finals in the 1,000m, and we placed first and fourth in a loaded 5K race."
Llano took the 5,000m with a time of 14:37.32, closing fast with a final mile of 4:23 to win the gold by three seconds over Xavier's Tommy Kauffmann. Richmond's Tim Quinn was fourth in the race, finishing in 14:48.80.
"Matt's 5K win was exciting by anyone's standard," said Taylor. "His final 1,600m was 4:23 which is a nice finish to his race. Then Tim's finishing kick was also excellent. He nearly got the third-place runner. Both Matt and Tim work for their performances and are driven to excel. They make the sacrifices that many people out there are not willing to make in order to achieve success. They know what it takes and it's great to see them reap the rewards of their sacrifice, determination and commitment to our program and University."
Junior Nicol Traynor's 5,000m on the women's side also highlighted Friday evening for the Spiders as she claimed a silver-medal finish in a time of 17:13.77. Erin Lunny was 10th (17:54.50) and Carter Norbo was 14th (18:13.29).
"Nicol (Traynor) and Erin (Lunny) ran well in the 5K," said Taylor. "That was the first time Erin has been under 18:00. Our DMR also ran well to get second and it was a big 1,600m anchor leg and PR of 4:56 for Dana (Guglielmo)."
The long jump saw another silver come Richmond's way when senior Megan Ney posted a mark of 5.68m in the event. The Spiders third silver came when the distance medley relay team of Jenn Ennis, Jasmine Cottle, Andi Defonce and Dana Guglielmo were clocked in 11:55.02.
Freshman Sam Weber sits ninth after Day One of the Heptathlon, after setting season-bests in the long jump (5.73m), high jump (1,54m) and a personal-best in the 55m (7.18). In the women's Pentathlon, freshman Meghan Hart set a personal-best by nearly 200 points to claim 12th witgh 2,715 points.
Graham reached the finals of the 1,000m with a 2:32.03 and a third-place in his heat. The 1,000m finals are set for Saturday. Both Andi Defonce and Alysaa Mankin narrowly missed berths in the finals as Defonce was 10th in the 800m (2:18.92) and Mankin was 11th in the 1,000m (3:02.49).
Dayton leads the women's meet with 63 points, followed by Rhode Island (38), Temple (35), Richmond (24) and Massachusetts (18) to round out the top five. Temple tops the men's leaderboard with 48 points, followed by Charlotte (39), Massachusetts (22), Rhode Island (18) and Richmond (17) top complete the top five.
