Rams are back-to-back A-10 champs
The 4x800 meter relay team of Ashley Greenlee (above), Ashley Brown, Judith White and Nichelle Scott placed third at the A-10 championships. Photo courtesy VCU Athletics.
Andy Riddler, Contributing Writer
Women’s Track and Field won its third straight Atlantic 10 title Feb. 24 at George Mason in Fairfax. The men’s team finished third for the second year in a row — narrowly missing out on a top-two finish.
Women
Junior distance runner Emily Mulhern was one of four Rams to win an individual A-10 title after edging out a five-second victory in the 5000-meter with a time of 16:35.28. She also ran a time of 9:41.18 in the 3000 to finish in third place, earning a total of 16 points for VCU.
Senior thrower Camora Sanders won two events to earn a team-high 20 points in the championship. She won the weight throw with a toss of 17.57 meters and the shot put with a throw of 13.95 meters.
Junior sprinter Kayla Smith won the 200-meter dash with a 24.64-second time. Smith also finished in second in the 400-meter after coming across the line in 54.37 seconds. Smith earned VCU a total of 18 points over the weekend.
Sophomore jumper Aliyah Newman won her second consecutive A-10 triple jump title with a jump of 12.52 meters to earn 10 points for the Black and Gold.
Coach John O’Riley was awarded his fourth A-10 Indoor Women’s Coach of the Year award as the Rams won their sixth track and field conference championship since 2015.
Men
The Rams came close to breaking past their program-best third-place finish this weekend, finishing 5.5 points behind second-place Rhode Island.
Redshirt-junior jumper Bashir Idris won the long jump with 7.09 meters. Freshman jumper Camron Browne finished in third place with a leap of 6.90 meters, edged out of second place by 0.02 meters.
Idris also brought home second in the triple jump with a 15.03-meter leap, earning a total of 18 points for VCU.
Sophomore thrower Willie Schwartz finished in third place in the weight throw with a toss of 18.19 meters. Schwartz improved on last year’s performance, in which he finished in sixth with a 15.27-meter throw.
Freshman sprinter JeVon Waller and senior sprinter Jamik Alexander finished first and second, respectively, in the 60-meter dash. Waller won with a time of 6.86 seconds, barely edging out Alexander who came across the line in 6.89 seconds.
Freshman thrower Jaekob Vollbrecht won the shot put with a throw of 17.09 meters, beating the next closest competitor by 0.42 meters.
Junior hurdler Ian Davis won the 60-meter hurdles and broke the meet record in the event with a time of 7.94 seconds. Davis was joined by junior sprinter Chukwuezugo Aguolu, freshman sprinter Emmanuel Waller and redshirt-senior sprinter Nicholas Buckingham on the 4-x-400 team that earned a second-place finish with a time of 3:18.67.
The Rams will compete again on March 8-9 in the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Birmingham, Alabama.
