Highlanders Finish Big South Championships Strong

Wednesday, May 12

High Point, N.C.

Radford University

Big South Outdoor Championships Day Three

Photo by: Todd Drexler/SESPORTSMEDIA.com

Highlanders Finish Big South Championships Strong

5/12/2021 9:45:00 PM | Women's Track and Field

HIGH POINT, N.C. – The Highlanders weren't held down by the cold, wet weather Wednesday afternoon in the third and final day of the Big South Championships. Radford saw strong performances from all the distance runners and a podium finish in the 4x100m relay.

At the conclusion of events Wednesday afternoon, the Big South handed out annual honors. Taylor Tinsley collected her second all-academic award as a Highlander after a strong four-year academic career at Radford as a recreation, parks, and tourism major.

"We came into the meet and as a staff thought a good three days would be 30 points," commented director of track and field Shelli Sayers. "We told the team to take risks, spoiol the narratives, and be aggressive. We scored 57.5 points. I'm overwhelmed with pride in what these women did at this meet."

After a rain delay pushed back field events into the mid-afternoon, the Highlanders got things started in the high jump event. Despite the cold and wet conditions, Radford was still able to grab 7.5 points from the event thanks to a fourth and sixth place finish by Kendall Lewis and Tinsley, respectively. The freshman Makayla Jones also saw her first action in a Big South Championship high jump.

The track events got started in the 4x100m relay race where Radford picked up their fourth podium finish of the week. The relay team of Karah Foster, Felicia Hewitt, Alexis Stafford, and Talasjah Weathersby took third place in the event and ran a time quick enough sixth in the program record book.

Next up was the 1500m race where Rachel Werking, Annsley Eckert, and Chloe Wellings all followed up strong performances yesterday in the preliminaries with even better times in the finals.

Werking was the top-finisher of the group and beat her previous personal best time by five seconds and moved into second all-time in the record books. Eckert cut down her time by five seconds and moved up to fifth in the record books. Wellings was the final Highlander to set a new personal best, beating her previous time by one second.

Maddie Wright ran in her third straight day of competition as well competing in the 100m hurdles finals. The quick race was her ninth total event she competed in this week.

MaKenzie Gardner competed in the 800m finals as well and set a time that was second-best in her career. In the 400m hurdles finals Julia Burkley also competed for the Highlanders.

The distance runners were excellent as always in the final individual competition of the afternoon. Werking capped off her incredible week by becoming just the second woman ever to break 17:00 in the 5k. Her time ranks second all-time.

Rachel Millirons and Wellings also set personal records in the event. Millirons ranks third in program history while Wellings ranks still ranks seventh. This finish marks the first time in recent program history that Radford has recorded points in all distance events.

"Rachel Werking was our highest point scorer," Sayers added. "She led a distance group that scored in every distance race for the first time in history. So impressed with their efforts."

The final event of the Big South Championships came in the 4x400m relay. The relay team of Foster, Hewitt, Stafford, and Burkley posted a time strong enough to enter the all-time top-10 list and place fourth overall.

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