Taryn Szalay

Jack Petrecca

Four championship heat qualifications and four scoring performances highlighted the first day of competition for The College of Wooster men's and women's track and field programs as they head into the second and final day of the North Coast Athletic Conference Indoor Championships held at Oberlin College's John W. Heisman Field House in Oberlin, Ohio.

Going into Saturday, the women stand in fourth place with 22 points and the men in eighth place with 16. Oberlin (62) currently leads the women's standings while Wabash (52) sits atop the men's.

On the women's side, senior Taryn Szalay qualified for tomorrow's championship heat in the 60-meter hurdles with a fourth-place preliminary time and personal-best clip of 9.53, as just one-tenth-of-a-second separated the second- through fourth-place qualifying times. Just behind Szalay in sixth place was sophomore Carolyn Webster (9.549), as she was edged out by Ohio Wesleyan's Alyssa Acevedo by .003 seconds in what was also a personal record the sophomore standout, who became the first Wooster student-athlete to win the Pentathlon during last week's multi-event conference championships.

In following suit with her older sister, first-year Regan Szalay put in a top-eight performance of her own, this time in the 400 prelims with a pace of 1:01.31 – a personal record – as less than one second separated the third- and eighth-place times heading into tomorrow's final.

Continuing along in the women's action, sophomore Mallory Crane went 33 feet, 1.25 inches in the triple jump for a seventh-place finish. Also claiming seventh-place was first-year Cobi Warstler in the 800, as she advanced to tomorrow's final heat with a personal-record run of 2:27.57.

Capping the day off for the women was the fifth-place distance medley relay quartet of Jackie White, Emani Kelley, Ashley Ferguson and Mackenzie Kellar, who crossed the line at 13:02.59.

On the men's side, sophomore Jack Petrecca leaped to a fifth-place finish in the high jump after topping 6 feet, .5 inches. Petrecca marked the only individual to score on the day.

In the day's closing event – the men's DMR – the quartet of Jacob Denbeaux, Brian Lief, Austin Hamlett and Simon Weyer finished outside of All-NCAC honors by .52 seconds with a fourth-place clip of 10:33.27.

In the pole vault, junior Jacob Nowell finished just beyond scoring contention as he placed ninth with a final height of 11 feet, 7.75 inches. Matching that place number in the triple jump was senior Conor Maley, who came off a school-record performance in last weekend's Heptathlon with a ninth-place try of 38 feet, 4 inches.

Tomorrow, field events commence at 10 a.m., followed by the running events at 2:30 p.m.