Spiders Post Strong Showing at VMI

Friday, January 18

Lexington, VA

University of Richmond

VMI Keydet Invitational

01/20/2019 | Women's Track & Field

The Richmond Spiders traveled to Lexington, Va. to compete in the VMI Keydet Invitational and had five athletes qualify for ECAC in their first meet of the new year.

Complete Final Results

On the first day of the two day meet, Junior Haley Berkeley kicked the strong performances off with a win in the Pentathlon, after taking the lead in the first event (60M) and holding it for the duration of the competition. Freshmen Tania Matthews and Tamar Accius ran strong prelim 60M events, both closely missing the ECAC qualifying mark, but advancing to the semi-final heat. Matthews advanced to run a 7.72 in the 60M dash semi-final to earn the ECAC qualifier of 7.73 mark and to record the fastest freshman time in the Atlantic 10. Caroline Robelen won section 2 of the 1,000M in a personal best 2:56.68 while Claire Brown (2:58.07) and freshman Kendra Smither (2:59.72) placed 6th and 7th in section 3. Junior Maria Acosta, sophomore Brooke Fazio and freshman Rachel Helbling all raced in the 500M event. Helbling led her heat to finish with a time of 1:15.03, a second under the ECAC qualifier. Fazio won the overall 500M event with a time of 1:14.10 with Acosta closely behind, claiming third overall (1:14.77), both qualifying for the ECAC Championship.

On day two of the competition, the freshmen runners again had a strong performance. Kayla Woods won section 5 of the 400M in 58.59. After qualifying for the ECAC Championship in the 60M on day one, Matthews competed in the finals, claiming 8th overall. Freshman Kayla Woods took second in the long jump with a mark of 5.72M to qualify for the ECAC Championship. In the final event of the meet, senior Eryn Mills, freshman Johanna Lupica and junior Erika Echternach raced in the 3K. Mills placed second (10:05.43) and Lupica took fourth with a time of 10:16.27.

Coach Lori Taylor was pleased with the athletes and their performances. She said "This is our first meet if the year and the biggest objective was to see our athletes compete and compete they did. The leadership of our upperclassmen was good, especially given it's been so long since they have competed. Our staff was also pleased with our large group of freshman. They showed competitiveness by winning races. This is a new team and we have athletes covering areas where we've recently struggled. For the first meet of the season, we are pleased and looking forward to the next few weeks when we see these athletes in their specialty events."

The Spiders will be competing in the Penn State National Open and the Patriot Games next weekend, January 25th and 26th. Until then, follow your Spiders on all of your favorite social media platforms!