HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College women's indoor track & field team has been picked to finish third in the Centennial Conference in the annual voting among head coaches. The Fords, who also placed third at the indoor conference championships a season ago, received 66 voting points 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' 66 points were just slightly edged out by Dickinson as the Red Devils received the other first-place vote and a total of 69 points. Swarthmore and Gettysburg rounded out the top five teams in the preseason voting.
Haverford has placed either first or second in the conference during 18 of the Centennial's 24 seasons. This includes six conference team championships, with the most recent coming in 2010 to cap a run of five straight indoor titles.
The team has had at least one individual conference champion in each of the past 14 indoor seasons and is coming off a year in which the Fords crowned two individual champions in Katie Sullivan (mile) and Taylor Murphy (60 meter hurdles). Sullivan also placed second in the 800 meters last winter after taking home that indoor title in 2016. Senior Claire Sargent is returning after a runner-up finish in shot put as a junior. She won the conference's indoor title in 2016.
Amelia Keyser-Gibson was the 2016 conference champion in the indoor 5,000 meters, while the 2016 championship winning DMR of Nicole Giannetti, Amy Zamora, Sophie Drew, and Keyser-Gibson each return this season. The Fords also return three legs of their 4x200 meter relay that captured the conference crown with Kerry Quigley, Tess Oberholtzer, and Murphy.
On the national state, Sullivan qualified to the NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field Championship in the mile, placing eighth overall at the national championship to earn her second indoor All-America honor. She earned her first All-America certificate on the Fords' 2016 DMR which also featured Quigley and Keyser-Gibson from this year's team. Giannetti (3,000 meters), Sargent (weight throw), and Mairead Ferry (pole vault) all enter the season as indoor school record holders in those respective events.
The Fords will open the indoor season on Saturday, November 9 as the host the Haverford Holiday Meet inside the Alumni Field House. The 2017 Centennial Conference Indoor Track & Field Championships will be hosted by Ursinus College. That meet will take place on Saturday, February 24 and continue through Sunday, February 25.