HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College women's indoor track & field team will send four runners to compete as a team in the distance medley relay (DMR) at this year's NCAA Division III Indoor National Championship. The championship will be held in the Bear Athletic Center at Grinnell College. The event will begin on Friday and continue through Saturday. The DMR is a finals only event and runners are set to take off at 8:10 p.m. on Friday night.
Together, Amelia Keyser-Gibson, Kerry Quigley, Katie Sullivan, and Nora Weathers compose the Fords' relay team. The Fords are seeded third in the event just behind MIT and Johns Hopkins. Keyser-Gibson, Quigley, and Sullivan will be making their debuts on the big stage, while Weathers is returning for her second appearance.
Weathers, a senior, will run the mile leg of the relay as the anchor for the Fords. Weathers has had an impressive career running for Haverford. This past month, at the Centennial Conference Championships, she set a personal best in the mile run with a time of 4:58.12, which earned her first conference indoor title. Her mile time was good enough to qualify as an individual to the national championship. However, she will focus solely on the DMR. Weathers was also an All-American in the 1,500 meters during last spring's outdoor season.
Sophomore classmates, Keyser-Gibson and Sullivan will run the 1200 meter and 800 meter legs, respectively. Keyser-Gibson, a distance runner out of Bainbridge Island, Washington will lead off the relay looking to give the Fords a solid start to the race. Sullivan, the Centennial Conference Champion in the 800 meters, recently set a new personal best for the event during her conference win with a time of 2:15.57.
Running in the second leg of the DMR will be freshman Kerry Quigley. The Newburgh, Maine native competed as a mid-distance runner/sprinter as well as a long jumper in her first season with the Fords.
This year marks the first time in program history that the women's track & field team will be represented by a relay at the NCAA Championship. The relay team originally set a new program record this season at the Haverford Widener Bryn Mawr Tri Meet finishing in 12:06.31. The DMR shattered that mark by nearly 17 seconds in the Tufts Final Qualifying meet for its NCAA seed time of 11:49.44.