Vandy Hurdlers Raise the Bar

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Vanderbilt track and field closed out its regular season on the indoor track with a pair of broken school records and nine marks ranking in the program all-time top 10 at the Music City Challenge Saturday.

“The timing of the meet allowed the coaches and athletes to pull everything together,” director of cross country and track and field Althea Thomas said. “The results showed what we’re capable of, how the plan we have is perfect for the timing of the personal and season bests, school top 10s and records and rankings in the SEC.”

To start the day, Sarah Marvin won the shot put with a season-best 14.79-meter throw. In the same event, Devyn Parham recorded a personal-best throw of 10.58 meters.

In the 400 meters, Allyria McBride finished third, clocking an indoor personal-best time of 53.57 seconds, which ranks fourth on the program all-time top 10 list.

After coming 0.02 seconds from breaking the 60-meter hurdles school record last weekend at the East Coast Invitational, Falon Spearman returned to her home track to accomplish the feat with a personal-best time of 8.18 seconds. She recorded times of 8.36 and 8.27 seconds in prelims and semifinals, respectively.

Four Commodores recorded at least one PR and improved their marks on the program all-time top 10 lists. Santana Spearman registered a time of 8.32 seconds in the final, moving to No. 3 all-time at Vandy and improving upon the personal best she set in semifinals, 8.36 seconds. Taylor McKinnon, who is now ranked fourth in program history, turned in personal bests in the prelims (8.46), semifinals (8.38) and final (8.36). Parham also recorded personal-best times in the prelims and semifinals, clocking 8.46 and 8.37 seconds in the respective rounds. She is tied for fifth in school history in the 60-meter hurdles. Marta Sivina notched a PR, which is also the seventh fastest mark in Vandy history, 8.44 seconds, in the prelims.

Less than 24 hours after breaking the mile school record, Julia Rosenberg reset her own program record in the 3,000 meters and won the event with a time of 9:14.16, which is more than a second faster than her previous PR.

In the last event of the weekend, the 4×400-meter relay squad of Isabella Dagrosa, McBride, Madyson Wilson and F. Spearman recorded the No. 10 mark in school history, 3:41.01 and finished third overall. The Vanderbilt “B” relay team of Sivina, Parham, Joy Moorer and Tina Benzinger earned a sixth-place finish with a time of 3:44.97.

“Any time you go to a championship, you want to have the confidence and the proof that you’ve done it once and can do it again in the elite setting of the SEC,” Thomas said. “This meet did exactly that for us. It put us in the position where we can be confident to go to Texas A&M and put our best foot forward to anchor down for Vanderbilt.”

The Commodores will have a week off before heading to College Station, Texas, for the SEC Indoor Championships Feb. 27 to March 1.