ATLANTA, Ga. -- Junior Kelsey Whitaker (Kingston, Mass./Notre Dame Acad.) won her first University Athletic Association title and senior Alyssa Fenenbock (Upper Saddle River, N.J./Northern Highlands Regional) earned All-UAA for the first time at the 2015 UAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Emory University today.
Whitaker won the 1,500-meter run with a time of 4:38.98, about three seconds off a personal best. The runner-up a year ago, Whitaker was seeded 10th after missing much of the season. She shaved more than 10 seconds off her season-best time to win the race by nine-tenths of a second. This was her third career individual All-UAA performance, having placed second last year in the mile run indoors. She was fourth in the mile indoors this season. The Judges narrowly missed out on a second All-Association performance in the event, as senior Kristi Pisarik (Chelmsford, Mass./Chelmsford) was fourth in 4:41.15, three-quarters of second out of third place. Pisarik lowered per personal best by more than seven seconds in the process. '
The Judges did pick up another top-three performance from a senior, as Fenenbock had a career-best UAA performance in the javelin. A scorer in each of her previous three seasons when she finished in sixth place each time, Fenenbock was seeded fifth headed into her final UAA meet with a distance of 101-11. On her final throw of the meet, Fenenbock exceeded that season best by more than 10 feet with a distance of 113-10, a career-best, breaking a pr set as a freshman at UAAs. Brandeis also had the fourth-place finisher in the javelin, as junior Ashley Klein (Manalapan, N.J. / Manalapan) turned in a distance of 111 feet even, only her third career throw better than 100 feet and a pr by nearly 10 feet, set at UAAs last year, when she also placed fourth.
Only one Brandeis runner scored in multiple events on the day, rookie Haliana Burhans (Charlotte, Vt./Champlain Valley Union) in the sprints. Burhans placed fifth in the 400-meter dash with a lifetime best of 58.30 seconds. She lowered her time from the prelims by 0.63 seconds and moved up one spot in the standings. In the 200 meters, despite a time of 26.69 seconds that was slower than her prelim mark, Burhans improved by two places to sixth, getting edged for fifth place by three-hundredths of a second. Junior Tove Freeman (Oakham, Mass./Quabbin Regional) also got points for the Judges in the 400, placing eighth with a time of 1:00.17, also a bit slower than her time in the prelims.
Rounding out the individual scorers for the Judges was sophomore Kate Farrell (Windham, N.H. / Windham) in the 5000-meter run. Farrell finished in seventh place with a time of 18:34.05.
Four Judges individual scorers combined to add points in the 4x400-meter relay, as Whitaker, Freeman, Pisarik and Burhans placed sixth with a time of 4:10.89.
Brandeis finished in seventh place at the meet with 42 points, 23 behind sixth-place Carnegie Mellon. Chicago won the title with 193 points to 184 for Washington University.
The Judges are back in action next weekend at the New England Division III Championships.