Willamette Invite On Tap for OSU
CORVALLIS, Ore. – For the second consecutive week the Oregon State track and field program will stay close to come, this time sending nearly two dozen student-athletes to compete at the Willamette Invite in Salem on Saturday.
Field events begin at 9:15 a.m. with races on the track starting at 11:15 a.m. A full schedule of the day’s events and general meet information can be found here and live results will be available at this link.
At Willamette, the Beavers will be represented by Michele Turney in the 200, long jump and triple jump; Lacey London in the 800; Haley Hunt, Taylor Nowlin and Hilary Sharpe in the 1,500; Monica Anderson, Adrienne Demaree and Sandra Martinez in the 5,000; Justine Bird, Allison Jackson and Jessica Lautenbach in the high jump; Helen Ann Haun and Annie Sidor in the pole vault; Bethany Imperial, Kaitlyn Mason and Kaylene Rust in both the long jump and triple jump; Tricia Ingraham in the shot put; Rachel Picknell in the discus and hammer; Kayla Fleskes in the discus and javelin; Christina MacDonald in the javelin; and Ryan Cope in the men’s 400m hurdles. The Beavers will also enter a 4x100 relay team and have both Sara Almen (high jump) and Lucinda Howard (high jump/long jump) compete unattached.
A talent in a number of disciplines and the school-record holder in the triple jump, Turney will be running her first collegiate 200m. At last season’s Willamette Invite, the then-freshman finished fourth in the triple jump with a leap of 37’ 3”.
The 800 will be the first race of the year for the redshirt junior London while Nowlin and Sharpe will be running their initial 1,500 this season. Hunt ran 4:53.55 at the distance to finish in seventh place at the OSU Invite on March 8 in Corvallis.
The trio of Anderson, Demaree and Martinez will run the first 5,000 of the season for Oregon State. A senior, Martinez is fifth on the school’s all-time list in the event, clocking a 16:47.46 at the Stanford Invitational in March 2010.
In the high jump, Lucinda Howard (5’ 5.75”), Jessica Lautenbach (5’ 3.75”) and Allison Jackson (5’ 3.75”) are all coming off PRs at last weekend’s Oregon Preview. At that meet, Sara Almen, competing unattached, came in second crossing 5’ 9.75” and nearly besting the bar at 5’ 11”.
Christina MacDonald will look to improve upon her school-record throw in the javelin (new implement). Her mark of 133’ 2” last Saturday in Eugene was an improvement of nearly 25 feet from the OSU Invite on March 8. She is currently 10th in the Pac-12 and has the third-best throw for any conference freshman. Rachel Picknell will continue her trendsetting ways for Oregon State in the hammer. In the first two such competitions in school history for a female, Picknell has gone 141’ 8” and 146’ 3”.
On the men’s side, Ryan Cope will run the 400 hurdles at 2:05 p.m. He PR’d in that event with a time of 56.83 on two occasions last season, first at the same Oregon Preview on March 16 and also at the Pacific Twilight on May 4.
