HAVERFORD, Pa. – The Haverford College women's indoor track & field team has been picked for a third-place finish in the Centennial Conference preseason poll. The Fords garnered 63 voting points among the conference head coaches. Coaches were not allowed to vote for their own teams.
Defending champion Johns Hopkins was picked to repeat while Dickinson garnered the other first-place vote and finished second in the poll with 70 points. Swarthmore (60 points) ranked fourth in the preseason release. Ursinus and Gettysburg each received 40 votes and tied for fifth.
Haverford is coming off of a second-place finish as a team at last year's indoor championships. The Fords have won six Centennial Conference Team Championships during the first 25 years of the conference and have been first or second in 19 of those 25 championship meets.
The Fords will have to replace a decorated Class of 2018 which combined for six individual Centennial Conference Championships and also made up three of the four legs on Haverford's DMR at the conference meet during the 2016 championship season.
Highlighting the returners to the Fords this winter are returning conference medalists Sophie Drew and Molly Hawkins. That pairing made up half of Haverford's second-place 4x800 relay team at the conference meet a season ago. Now a sophomore, Jessica Lopez was also a scoring performer for Haverford a season ago in both the sprints and the jumps.
The indoor track & field season gets underway on Saturday, December 8 as the Fords host the Haverford Holiday Meet which is slated for an 11 a.m. start inside the Alumni Field House. The 2019 Centennial Conference Indoor Track & Field Championships are slated for Saturday, February 23 and Sunday, February 24 at Ursinus.