Saturday, February 18, 2012

The Valparaiso women's track and field team got in one final tuneup for the upcoming Horizon League Championships on Saturday, competing at the Boilermaker Invitational, hosted by Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind.

Sophomore Marissa Crafton (Chesterton, Ind./Chesterton) matched her personal best and the fifth-best mark in Crusader history in the long jump on Saturday, leaping 16'7 3/4” to finish the event in fifth place. Fellow second-year competitor Kelley Freeman (Valparaiso, Ind./Chesterton) cleared 10'6” in the pole vault to place seventh.

Sophomore Sarah Drozdowski (Roselle, Ill./Lake Park) had another pair of strong finishes in the throws on Saturday. Drozdowski unleashed a toss of 54'6 1/2” in the weight throw, good for fifth place, while also placing eighth in the shot put with a mark of 41'0 1/4”.

On the track, the top finish came from sophomore Claire Johnson (Eden Prairie, Minn./Eden Prairie), who ran to a fifth-place finish in the one mile run with a career-best time of 5:08.11. Freshman Kelli Wosick (Mount Prospect, Ill./Saint Viator) finished seventh in the 400m dash, crossing the line in 1:02.37, while sophomore Grace Shemwell (Clinton, Iowa/Clinton) and freshman Eileen Carmignani (Naperville, Ill./Benet Academy) ran to seventh and eighth place finishes, respectively, in the 800m run with times of 2:39.14 and 2:40.31.

Valparaiso goes to the 2012 Horizon League Indoor Track and Field Championships next weekend in Youngstown, Ohio, a two-day meet beginning on Saturday, Feb. 25. Action is slated to get underway at 8 a.m. CST both days.