HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College women's indoor track & field team has been picked to finish second in the Centennial Conference in the annual voting among head coaches. The Fords, who placed second at the indoor conference championships a season ago, received one first place vote in the poll. Coaches were not allowed to vote for their own teams.
Defending conference champion Johns Hopkins was picked first in the poll with 81 points and nine first-place votes. The Fords' 72 points edged Dickinson's 65 points for the second slot in the poll. Muhlenberg and Gettysburg rounded out the top five teams in the preseason voting.
The Fords, led by the two-time reigning Centennial Conference Indoor Track & Field Coach of the Year Fran Rizzo, placed second at last year's conference meet. Haverford has placed either first or second in the conference during 18 of the Centennial's 24 season. This includes six conference championships with the most recent coming in 2010 to cap a run of five straight indoor championships.
The team has crowned at least one individual conference champion in each of the past 13 indoor seasons and is coming off a year in which the Fords led the Centennial Conference with seven event champions (five individual, two relay). The Fords return four of their five individuals champions from last winter's championship and all four legs of both the 4x200 meter and distance medley relay winning teams.
Looking to defend individual titles will be Claire Sargent (shot put), Brittany Steele (60 meters), Katie Sullivan (800 meters), and Amelia Keyser-Gibson (5,000 meters). In the DMR, Sophie Drew, Nicole Giannetti, Amy Zamora and Keyser-Gibson all return from their first-team All-Centennial Conference seasons. The championship 4x200 meter relay team consisted of Taylor Murphy, Tess Oberholtzer, Kerry Quigley, and Brittany Steele.
On the national state, the Fords sent their DMR to the Division III Championship for the first time in school history and came away with four All-American certificates as Keyser-Gibson, Quigley, Sullivan, and Nora Weathers '16 led the team to a third place finish that scored six points and gave the team a 35th place finish at the national championship.
The Fords will open the indoor season this Saturday at the Ursinus Bow Tie meet. The 2017 Centennial Conference Indoor Track & Field Championships will be hosted by Ursinus College. That meet will take place on Saturday, February 25 and continue through Sunday, February 26.