University of Richmond Athletics
Men Sixth, Women Eighth After Day One Of A-10 Championships
02/18/2011 | Women's Track & Field
Feb. 18, 2011
KINGSTON, R.I. - As day one of the Atlantic 10 Indoor Track & Field Conference Championships comes to a close, the Spider men are in sixth and the women are in eighth-place heading into Saturday's competition.
"Our men did well today," said men's head coach Steve Taylor. "Andrew Benford's win in the 5K was great... Matt Mello ran a big personal best in the 800M to make finals. Tomorrow we need everyone to compete like they did today. It's going to be a great meet tomorrow."
Redshirt-senior Andrew Benford's clinched the Spiders only first-place victory for day one of the A-10 Championships. He claimed gold in the men's 5,000m run with a time of 14:32.21. Senior Tim Quinn followed in fifth-place (14:48.74) and redshirt-senior Jon Wilson finished seventh (15:05.52).
Senior Tremayne Graham had a successful day, qualifying for two event finals. He placed second in the 55m dash preliminaries with a time of 6.47. Graham also qualified for the men's 200m dash with a time of 22.50 and an eighth-place finish. Both the 55m and 200m dash finals are set for Saturday.
Fellow senior Matt Mello came in eighth-place in the men's 800m qualifier with a time of 1:57.71.
On the women's side, freshman Alli Mannon finished fifth in the 1,000m run (2:59.65), qualifying for the final race on Saturday.
Senior X'auntasia Johnson came in sixth-place with a mark of 5.56m (18-03.00) in the women's long jump competition. Fellow senior Monica Howard placed 10th in the weight throw with a mark of 15.51m (50-10.75).
Freshman Grace Gibson tied for sixth-place in the pole vault competition. She finished with mark of 3.30m (10-10.00).
Sophomore Meghan Hart claimed eight-place and freshman Ann O'Toole came in 10th in the women's indoor pentathlon. Hart finished with a total of 2,932 points and O'Toole had 2,850 points.
"We had several athletes perform well today," said women's head coach Lori Taylor. "Most of our athletes set personal best marks and they are young. Tomorrow most of the race finals take place so our team needs to step up, get their rest and mentally prepare for their events."
Going into day two, Dayton tops the women's leaderboard with 77 points. Rhode Island is currently in second-place (35), followed by Charlotte in third (30), St. Louis in fourth (20), and La Salle in fifth (19). Rhode Island leads the men's competition with 37.50 points, followed by UMass (37), Charlotte (28.50), St. Louis (20), and Temple (19) to found out the top five.
The meet, hosted by the University of Rhode Island, will resume Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. with multi and field events. The day is set to end around 3:00 p.m., with the Awards Ceremony scheduled to begin around 3:30 p.m.
To view Saturday's live stats, click here.
Stay tuned to RichmondSpiders.com for a complete report of Saturday's meet. For more in-depth coverage on the meet, visit Coach Taylor's blog, or follow him on Twitter.
