Dallas City Wire

Women's Track & Field Primed for LSC Indoor Championships

As the indoor track season comes to a close, the DBU Women's Track Team will compete at the Lone Star Conference Championships. Since the beginning of the season, each race has been aimed toward qualifying for this meet; the opportunity to compete against the best the LSC has to offer. Even though DBU rosters few field event athletes, they will fight tooth and nail for as many points as they can score with the hopes of the best team finish since moving to the LSC.

PATRIOT STORYLINES
- DBU placed fourth overall at the championships last year. This year, DBU is slotted to finish 3rd based on seed times.
- The Lady Patriots' best team finish is fourth in both 2021 and 2022.
- DBU is projected to make the podium in four events including first in the Distance Medley Relay.

With the opportunity to make the podium for the first time since moving to the Lone Star Conference, every point DBU can scrounge up will be of the utmost importance. Those points start in the sprinting events. In the 60m hurdles, Grace Harney leads DBU with the best seed time of 9.24s, ranking her seventh in the conference. Meadow Housman is slotted at ninth, followed by Mahal Thorpe in tenth. Ellie Frye is the closest to a scoring position in the 400m, ranked 10th with a time of 58.62.

Where DBU will score most of their points is in the distance events. Starting in the 800m, Emily Cole is ranked sixth. Giselle Luera, Reese Jay, and Mackenzie Bryan are positioned outside of the scoring, but an upset in the preliminary rounds could get them on the board. Leading DBU in the mile is school record-holder Marissa Insinna, ranked second overall behind Division II's best miler, Eleonora Curtabbi. Emme O'Donnell is ranked third with Cole, Madison Brown, and KayCee Keller all in the top eight. Insinna is DBU's best 3000m runner, ranked third just in front of Brown in fourth. Rylee Cristan, O'Donnell, Jenna Howard, and Keller make up 7-10. In the 5000m, Keller's seed time is second-best in the conference, followed by Howard in third and Lily Jacobs in sixth.

Though not typical for previous DBU teams, the Lady Patriots are capable of scoring points in the field events. Amanda Chacon is ranked seventh in the conference for the pentathlon, the first event of the meet. Abby Phillips, Abbey Bradshaw, and Chacon are all just outside of the scoring projections in the high jump, as is Whitney Willeford in the Long Jump and Hayden Green in the Triple Jump.

DBU's Distance Medley Relay is ranked first with a mark of 12:25.80 thanks to its deep roster but will have to fend of West Texas A&M for the event championship. DBU's best 4x400 mark is slotted fifth at 3:59.47.

The LSC Championship meet will take place over two days. Day one will include all the preliminary races and the finals of the DMR and 5000m run. Day two will be the finals of the remaining races. General information about the meet can be found here. 

Original source can be found here