Buckeye Reporter

The College of Wooster track and field teams opened the outdoor season at the three-day Alan Connie Shamrock Invitational, posting some head-turning marks along the way.

The men finished 14th as a team with 24 points while the women placed 20th overall with 5.5 points.

Junior Ainsley Wiesner broke the school record in the hammer throw with a career-best mark of 136 feet, 2 inches, improving on the previous mark set just last season by Natalie Tanner by over one foot.

Meanwhile, junior Davis Patterson won the decathlon with a total of 5,424 points, which ranks as the fourth-highest score in school history and the highest since 1999. Sophomore Echo Kidd also cracked the Scots' top-10 list in the long jump, leaping a career-best 23 feet, 4.5 inches for the fifth-best mark in school history and placing third overall in the meet.

Senior Will McMichael was the runner-up in the seeded 800 meters in a time of 1:55.75. Junior Athena Tharenos finished sixth overall in the seeded 800 meters, crossing the finish line in a time of 2:22.38. Senior Claudia Partridge tied for eighth place in the high jump after clearing a height of 5 feet, 2.25 inches.

The 4x400 relay team of senior Haley Bloom, Partridge, first-year Izzy Cozzie and Tharenos placed eighth in a time of 4:12.05. On the men's side, the 4x400 quad of senior Joe Shilts, sophomore Cam Ray, first-year Zane DeMercurio and senior Nick Scherson combined for an 11th-place finish in a time of 3:30.45.

Other notable results included career-best times of 15.79 and 15.95 seconds for junior Mary Sirois and sophomore Clare Mackin, respectively, as they placed sixth and seventh in the 100-meter hurdles qualifying rounds. Senior Brennen Testa also ran a career-best 18.31 seconds to finish 14th in the 110-meter hurdles qualifying round.

In the open 400 meters, Bloom finished fifth with a time of 1:03.51 while Cozzie took 14th in the same event in 1:05.41. Ray placed 11th in the open 800 meters in a career-best 2:05.98 and Shilts also placed 11th in the 400-meter hurdles in a time of 57.32 seconds.

First-year Robert Mays III took 14th in the shot put with a career-best mark of 45 feet, 1 inch while first-year Evie Sanford tossed 119 feet, 1 inch to take 11th in the discus throw and also threw 36 feet, 8.25 inches to finish 16th in the shot put.

The Scots return to action at the two-day Oberlin Spring Opener which begins March 31.

Original source can be found here