Last year when Virginia came to Penn Relays, the Cavaliers’ story of the meet was the win in the women’s distance medley relay — an achievement that Virginia had not accomplished since 1982. However, this year the star power was centered around the throwers.
The meet kicked off with a pair of victories in hammer throw on both the women’s and the men’s sides for freshman Charlotta Sandkulla and senior Jeremiah Nubbe.
Nubbe’s best mark was 73.76 meters on his third attempt — a new personal best and an improvement on his No. 2 Virginia program mark. Alumnus Hilmar Jonsson still holds the Virginia record, though, for his 75.26-meter mark. However, Nubbe is beginning to bridge that gap.
Sandkulla threw a distance of 67.13 meters, steadily progressing in each of her first four throws and placing the highest on her fifth. She was not too far from her personal record of 67.31 meters either, and was over six meters ahead of the runner up.
In the same event, freshman Aixa Corbacho placed fourth for her throw of 59.64 meters.
Virginia had strength in women’s discus and shot put, too. Graduate student Janae Profit claimed second in discus, with a mark of 53.56 meters completed in her final attempt. For shot put, graduate student Brooke Lumpkin was also the runner up, narrowly beating out the third-place thrower from the Army Jordan Hecht by 0.05 meters, for a throw of 16.23 meters.
On the relay side, the men’s team ran Friday in the distance medley relay where they ultimately placed third behind both Oregon and Villanova. The order for the men’s distance medley relay was the 1200-meter leg led by graduate student Nathan Mountain, followed by a 400-meters leg by freshman Anders Felts, then an 800 run by graduate student Samuel Rodman, and then finished off with senior Gary Martin running the 1600.
Mountain was able to get into good placement by the end of his leg, being the first to hand off the baton. But, in the second quarter of the race, Felts was unable to hold onto the lead and moved down three places into fourth. Rodman maintained that place during the 800, and Martin was able to pull one place ahead in the 1600.
Still, Martin was not able to move ahead into the top group with Villanova’s senior Marco Langdon and Oregon’s sophomore Simeon Birnbaum, and by the last hundred meters of the race, it was clearly just a battle between the two of them. The Virginia DMR finished with a time of 9:33.13.
The men’s 4xMile placed fourth overall with a team of graduate student Will Daley, graduate student Brett Gardner, Martin and Mountain.
The women’s DMR led by sophomore Tatum Olesen, junior Ariel Fletcher, junior Cate DeSousa and junior Tatum David placed sixth overall with a time of 11:00.37. The team had been solidly in seventh place throughout the first three legs of the race, but David was able to pull one more spot ahead of Providence.
The best placing in the relays was the women’s 4x1500-meter run by DeSousa, junior Gillian Bushée, David and sophomore Stella Kermes. Overall, it was a smaller race than the rest of the relays with only four teams — NC State, Villanova, Oregon and Virginia.
Though Virginia had fallen behind in the first leg of the race, they were able to get back up with the rest of the pack of Villanova and Oregon later on.
The Cavaliers were unable to move up to NC State, who ended the race with a 20-second lead, but they were able to gain a small lead over the other two teams. Virginia finished second with a time of 17:18.80.
The meet was not as strong of a showing as last year for the distance contingent, however, for the throwers, they were able to hold up a strong offense in various areas from hammer throw to discus to shotput, winning titles or placing well.
Relays will not be a part of the championship season for distance, though, so it is not a clear indicator of how the distance team will perform at ACCs or NCAAs, which only uses a 4x100 and 4x400 meter relay.
Looking ahead, next weekend the Cavaliers will head to the Larry Ellis Invitational hosted in Princeton, N.J., and also attend the Hill City Twilight in Lynchburg, Va.
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