The season so far has been a flight of stairs. Each meet, each individual accomplishment, a step towards the Profs ultimate destination, the New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) championships.
“There’s a kid in the 800… her [personal record] prior to this was 2:30… she just ran a 2:26,” said women’s track & field head coach Ringo Adamson. “That’s Ava Raccaro. We have a lot of [athletes] who we know what they’re going to do in the race. What’s expected of them. But when you see a kid like that now, she went from not even knowing if she could make it in the meet to running her way in. That’s the beautiful thing about this sport, you can start yourself. Just improve on times and bingo you’re on your way!”
Adamson has stressed the importance of personal improvement all year, and with every step the progress has been seen in this Rowan squad.
Rowan’s 4th place finish at the Widener Invitational is another one of the big steps in the final stretch of Rowan’s season.
“Basically I used this meet to try out some other events that [the team] maybe don’t run during the season, because you never know with the conference meet how you have to split up people and use them,” Adamson said.
All year he has been transparent to the fact that his goal is on the endgame. The meet itself stayed true to the themes of Rowan’s season, as there was personal improvement in the times of many runners.
For example, Myiah Sturdivant posted her best times of the year in the 100 and 200 meter dash events.
The 200 yard dash, which was an area Adamson stressed that they were going to work hard to improve, was the event that saw the most improvement in for the Profs. Sturdivant, Aaniyah Robinson, Darielle Cross, Melina Johnson, Sidney McLeod-Whitener, Aspen McMillan, Promise Fadahunsi and Leilanie Hinton all hit their season best mark at Widener Invitational.
Next week Rowan will compete at the legendary Penn Relays. Adamson will look for much of the same as the Widener Invitational, testing athletes in different events that they may not usually run in preparation for upcoming conference championships pointing out that Rowan could post huge times in both the 4×100 meter and 4×400 meter relays.
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