Westfield Girls Track midseason 2004

It is hard to discuss the Westfield Girls Track team without mentioning junior Emily McNeill and the powerful Blue Devil middle distance runners. And despite another dominating performance at the annual Blue Devil Relays Saturday, veteran coach Nancy Carpenter states there is much more to this team.

“This is the most balanced team we’ve ever had here ,” Carpenter said, as her distances coach Jennifer Buccino nodded in agreement. Carpenter has been head coach since 1991 and Buccino since 1989, so their sentiments cover a lot of territory.

Starting with 23 girls in her first year, the squad now numbers an impressive 103 and it would had had more, but for the first time Carpenter instituted a list of minimum performances for each event which eliminated nine more girls from the team.

“We’re not trying to discourage people, but we do have minimum standards that everyone should meet ,” said Carpenter.

The current focus is the Penn Relays, which began yesterday in Philadelphia. Three Westfield relay teams, are competing with the 4 by 800 team, led by McNeill, given the best chance of being one of 12 schools to reach the Championship of America finals. The qualifying heats were conducted yesterday with the championship scheduled f.or today.

“Our goal is to make the finals ,” said sophomore Meg Driscoll. “We were disappointed with the way we ran last year.”

Senior Deenie Quinn thinks the team will have to run under 9:25 to achieve their goal.
“We can do that. Everybody is capable of dropping their times by a few seconds ,” said Quinn.

Driscoll, Quinn and junior Ann Onishi all ran well at the Blue Devil Relays but
the team needed a 2:15 anchor leg from McNeill to make up a 10 yard deficit and beat a very strong Voorhees team in a season best time of 9:32.8 McNeill, was pleased with the win but . Buccino cautioned “It’s a good start but we still have some work to do.”

While the 4 by 800 was their only victory, the girls showed good balance by placing in the 4 by 100, the 4 by 200 and the sprint medley on the track as well as the shot put, discus and javelin relays.

Carpenter thinks the team is ideally set up to do very well in the conferences and countys where they are perennial contenders. "The sections and states present a bigger challenge," said Carpenter.

Also competing in the Penn Relays will be the 4 by 100 relay team of Mika Cruz, Jennell Carter, Alison Fleder and Ja'net Tiller.. With Cruz unavailable for the Blue Devil Relays Jessica Stroemer ably filled in as the team finished fifth in 52.6 .The same quartet also finished fifth in the 4 by 200 in 1:51.2.

Cruz and Carter will be joined by Miriam Becker-Cohen and Joann Mathew in the 4 by 400. Tiller, Carter and Matthew teamed with Becker-Cohen to finish fourth in the sprint medley. Becker-Cohen, a sophomore is a talented 800 runner, who has filled in on the 4 by 800 team in several meets.

Westfield had no shortage of fine field event performances. Saturday,. Alison Petrow and Caroline Sheridan established a school record in the shot put relay for the second time this season with a 65' 7" combined toss. Petrow teamed with Christina Henry to place 5th in the discus relay. And Sheridan teamed with Robyn Streit to place 5th in the javelin.

The dominant teams were Hunterdon Central with four firsts and Elizabeth with three.
“This meet was a good experience for us ,” said Carpenter. “There were some very good teams here.”