In its ACC Championship debut last weekend, Stanford track and field finished in ninth-place with 46 points on the women’s side and 11th-place with 38.5 points on the men’s side.
Junior Alyssa Jones led the charge for the Cardinal women in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, scoring 19 of the team’s 46 points across four events. On Friday, she defended her conference crown in the long jump with a winning mark of 21-5½ (6.54m), adding to her ACC title from the indoor season.
Jones followed up with a personal best in the 100-meter prelim to advance to Saturday’s final, where she finished fourth — Stanford’s highest conference finish in the event since 2012. To round out her Saturday triple, Jones placed ninth in the high jump and helped the 4×100-meter relay team to fifth place in a 14-team field. Senior Teagan Zwanstraa, also a member of the relay squad, had placed third in the long jump behind Jones with a personal best of 20-6½ (6.26m).
In the 800-meters, junior Roisin Willis, the reigning ACC indoor champion, led from the gun before falling to third in a furious battle on the home stretch with Clemson’s Gladys Chepngetich and UNC’s Makayla Paige. Willis clocked a season’s best time of 2:00.43 to dip 0.27 seconds under the previous meet record.
Also in the middle distances, sophomore Leo Young closed the 1500-meter with a 52.06 final lap to place third — his best finish at a postseason meet yet. Young was just 0.60 seconds shy of UNC’s ACC record holder Ethan Strand, who won the event.
On the distance side, sophomore Sophia Kennedy claimed second in the 5,000-meters, holding her ground behind NC State junior Grace Hartman despite racing the 1,500-meters just two hours earlier. In the following men’s 5,000-meters that saw yet another meet record fall, graduate student Cole Sprout secured third with a season’s best time of 13:39:46.
The Cardinal closed out the weekend with a dramatic performance in the first heat of the men’s 4×400-meter relay. A fumbled handoff after the second leg left Stanford chasing Notre Dame, but freshman Ryan Reynolds’ posted a 45.97 anchor leg, slingshotting off the final curve and outkicking the Fighting Irish for the heat win and fifth-place finish overall.
Next, Stanford track and field will compete in College Station, Texas for the NCAA West Prelims on May 28-31 before heading to the NCAA Outdoor Championships just two weeks later.