This past weekend the Amherst women’s indoor track and field team traveled to Boston to compete in the Valentine Invitational on Friday, Feb. 10. In its final regular season meet, the purple and white posted some impressive results against a field of runners from colleges and universities across all three NCAA Divisions.

In the 200-meter dash for the track events, Rubii Tamen ’19 finished 116th with a time of 26.96, and Anna Buford ’20 placed second on the team in the event, finishing 143rd overall (27.41).

In the 400-meter dash, Tamen finished 70th with a time of 59.69, while Julia Asin ’19 finished in 87th place with a time of 1:00.48. Meanwhile, Amherst’s Katherine Hom ’19 posted a 1:03.87 to finish 136th overall. In the slightly longer 500-meter dash, junior Danielle Griffin posted a mark of 1:21.04, placing 29th overall. In the middle distance, Leonie Rauls ’18 finished 59th overall in the 800-meter dash with a strong time of 2:19.50. In the 1,000-meter run, sophomore Lela Walter posted a time of 3:08.27 to finish 42nd and Adele Loomis ’18 ran a 3:19.28 to finish 62nd.

Representing Amherst in the long-distance events was Kristin Ratliff ’20, who ran an impressive race in the mile to finish 184th with a time of 5:32.67. Katherine Treanor ’20 posted an impressive time in the 3,000-meter run, running a 10:02.48, good for a 54th place finish.

Amherst also showed strongly in the field events. In the high jump, senior Kiana Herold continued her season-long dominance, jumping 1.65 meters to a three-way tie for sixth place, while first-year Kaitlyn Siegel tied for ninth after jumping a height of 1.60 meters. In the long jump, Abbey Asare-Bediako ’18 earned a place of 21st overall, jumping 11.01 meters. Emily Flaherty ’19 also put forth a strong performance for Amherst with a distance of 10.13 meters.

In addition to the college events, the meet featured a number of events for the world’s best professional athletes. First-year Annabelle Gary was awed seeing elite running heavyweights like Shelby Houlihan and Colleen Quigley post the first and second fastest mile times run in 2017 by females.

Gary expressed how rewarding and “inspiring” it was to see “incredibly talented people run … because running is their lives and it’s clear that hard work that they put in pays off.”

“It was really cool to see people who competed in Rio only feet away from us racing on the track,” sophomore Veronica Rocco noted.

The purple and white’s next contest is NCAA DIII New England Championships, hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from Friday, Feb. 17th to Saturday, Feb. 18th. The meet is set to begin on Friday at 3 p.m.