Nicholls track and field continues to break records

The Nicholls State University women’s track and field team achieved multiple personal bests last weekend at their second outdoor meet of the season at the Louisiana Classics in Lafayette, La.

PERSONAL RECORDS
The Colonels improved in a variety of events, and multiple runners shaved seconds off their prior race times. Senior Callie Skull ran the sixth-best 400-meter time in Nicholls program history, and bettered her previous time by one second.

Joining Skull in the line of runners who reached new personal records was fellow senior Emily Sauce, who ran the 10th best 800-meter race time in program history.

Senior Lucija Barac also ran the 800m, and made an impressive nine-second improvement to her race time, reaching a new best.

The senior winners circle continued throughout the day as Hannah Naquin and Taylor Douglas both ran their fastest 1500m races, and Alondriah Brown broke her time in the 100m dash.

Along with Brown, junior Ieisha Taylor and sophomore Mykia Scott also improved their 100m times.

SMOOTH TRANSITION
Head Coach Stefanie Slekis said the transition from indoor to outdoor track has been enjoyable by most of her athletes.

“I think that a lot of people find it to be an easy transition if they found indoor difficult, because some things that are difficult about indoor can be alleviated by the outdoor track,” Slekis said. “Indoor, some things that can be tricky is if you’re a sprinter, staying in your own lane on the curve. Even professionals can have some difficulty staying in their lane on an indoor track. In outdoor, the lanes are wider, the track is twice the size, and even for a distance runner who is new to the sport, passing is a lot easier.”

After their second outdoor meet of the season, looking forward, Slekis said the Colonels are working towards competing at their highest level by the time they reach the Southland Conference Championships in May.

Although the training is hard for the athletes now, Slekis said it is part of a strategy to help them improve.

“We’re definitely learning from what we’re doing and we know how our training cycles work, and that we are going to be tired at this time of year,” Slekis said. “But then, hopefully they’ll start to feel the benefits of us tapering off towards the end of April and definitely for the beginning of May for Conference; we’ll be primed and ready to run our best.”