Colby host to NE Div. III women’s track championships

If you’re an outdoor track enthusiast and you don’t have a meet of your own on Saturday, you might drive to Waterville and catch the event that will serve as a prelude to one of the best collegiate outdoor track meets in the country this year.

Saturday, Colby College will host the New England Division III Women’s Track and Field Championships. No admission will be charged.

Scoring events for the meet begin at 10 a.m., preceded by an exhibition racewalk at 9:30 a.m.

May 27-30, Colby will host the national NCAA Division III outdoor track championships, featuring some of the top male and female track stars in the country. Some of those women will compete at Colby Saturday and many others will be working to qualify for the nationals.

For example, Jean Olds of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., will be there. Olds is the No. 1 runner in the nation in the 5,000 meters in NCAA Div. III and will be seeded No. 1 in the nationals.

Then there’s Brandeis freshman Eleena Zhelezov, a Russian immigrant. Zhelezov won the triple jump and the long jump at the NCAA Division III indoor track and field championships in March and is ranked No. 1 in the country in Div. III in the triple jump.

According Colby sports information director Andrea Solomita, Zhelezov has the potential to set a national triple jump record.

Solomita said Brandeis is the team to watch Saturday, but she also expects strong performances from two Maine teams – Bowdoin and Colby. Brandeis might not have the potential to win because of numbers, but its entries should score well.

Peter Slovenski’s Bowdoin Polar Bears won the New England Small College Athletic Conference team title May 2 at Tufts, a first for the Bowdoin outdoor track program, men’s or women’s.

Bowdoin edged Williams 145-126 and some of those women will be battling each other again on Saturday. Bowdoin will be led by junior Erin O’Neill, who earned the Frank Sabasteanski Award as NESCAC’s outstanding performer.

O’Neill won the triple jump at 34 feet, 9 1/2 inches; won the 100 meters in 12.73 seconds; was second in the 400 hurdles with a Bowdoin record of 1:05.3; was third in the long jump at 16-8 1/4; and anchored the winning 4×100 relay team and 4×400 relay team that finished second.

The 4×100 relay team with freshmen Sarah Soule of Cumberland, Amy Toth, and Emily LeVan, broke its own Bowdoin record with a time of 50.04.

Bowdoin co-captain Eileen Hunt of Island Falls, winner of the NESCAC 5,000 meters with a personal-best 17:56.98, should contend in that event and the 3,000 meters, where she finished second.

Colby finished fourth at NESCAC but has several top contenders in Saturday’s meet, including its only national qualifier to date, sophomore Michelle Severance of Topsfield, who will compete in the 3,000 meters.

Junior Christen Herlihy is one of the top seeds in the heptathlon. Some of the competition for that event will begin Friday at 3 p.m.

Colby, hoping to finish among the top six teams, is placing senior Amy Young and first-year competitors Patty Lee and Brooke Lorenzen in the field events.

Solomita said the 1,500-meter racewalk is being conducted as an exhibition entry in order to build up interest in the sport.

“Because the United States has done so poorly in that event in the Olympics, the idea is to promote the sport at the college level and hope to get it sponsored by the NCAA,” Solomita said.

Gretchen Eastler of Farmington, a student at Simmons College in Boston, is one of the entrants. “It should be a very interesting event,” Solomita said. “It will be an actual intercollegiate competition, but just won’t be sanctioned.”