Saturday, March 21, 2009

Some Sad News: Artie Campbell

Bill Bakewicz (Class of 1978) notified me that Artie Campbell (Class of 76) had passed away. Artie ran the Hurdles at St John's.

I never met Artie, so it would be nice if some of his fellow alums could share some memories by adding comments to this post.

Friends and Alumni Reception Feb 21, 2009

On Feb 21 Friends and Alumni of St John's track gathered at the Armory during the first day of the Indoor Big East Championships. More then 30 alums and friends of the program attended.

A class member from each decade was respresented from the 1950's to the 2000's.

Some pictures of the event can be found at: STJ Big East Reception.

The group was joined by STJ team and staff. Our current team members were pleasantly surprised by the timespan represented by the alums and enjoyed mixing with the different generations.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Priscilla Frederick Closes out the 2009 Indoor Season


Sophomore Priscilla Frederick closed out a demanding indoor season with a 14th place finish in a highly competitive High Jump competition at the Indoor NCAA Championships in College Station. Destinee Hooker of Texas broke both the Meet and Collegiate record with a 6'-6" clearance

This indoor season saw Priscilla break the school jump record twice and make an impressive debut in the Pentathlon.Congratulations to Priscilla on a great season. More Details can be found on the Red Storm site at: Frederick Finishes 14th At NCAA Indoor Championships

Indoor ECAC 2009 Recap

The ECAC championships were held in Princeton on March 7th - March 8th. St John's again showed significant improvement over last season by scoring 15 points and finishing 20th out of 51 teams compared to 36th last season.

The Red Storm jumps squad led the way by scoring 2 athletes in the High Jump. Priscilla Frederick broke her month old school record with a 1.82m leap and is now a scant 1/4 of inch away from becoming the first St. John's women to break the 6 foot barrier. Additionally, Priscilla's jump ranks her joint 7th in the nation and so booked her ticket for the NCAA championships in College Station, Texas. Priscilla was supported by team mate Venisa Clarke-Lee who finished 5th with a 1.70m (5'-7") jump

Senior Phobay Kutu-Akoi also scored in her sprint specialties with a 7th place 7.61 second performance in the 60 meter dash and an 8th place 24.83 finish in the 200 meters.

A fuller recap can be found at the Red Storm site: Five Red Storm Athletes Earn All-East Honors At ECAC Championships. Full results of the meet can be found at: ECAC Indoor Track and Field Championship

Indoor Big East 2009 Roundup

For the second year in a row, the Indoor Big East was held at the Armory in Washington Heights, New York City.

Our young team showed significant improvement from last year when we finished in the basement - 16th out of 16 teams. This year we moved up to 11th scoring a total of 21 points. For a full break out of scoring you can visit the STJ RedStorm site: Big East Complete Results. The site also provides an excellent review of the meet: Big East Recap

The team was led by Graduate student Arina Gerasimova who racked up 10 points in taking the Triple Jump title while battling a sore achilles. Arina showed her consistency by jumping a season best of 12.36 m (40' 6 3/4") twice during the competition and had a marginal foul of a longer jump on her last attempt.

Sophomore Priscilla Frederick scored 8 points in 2 events. Competing in her 2nd Pentathlon, Frederick finished 7th scoring 3,557 points. The competition was stiff as evidenced by the fact that the first 6 finishers all achieved NCAA provisional qualifiers. Subsequently 3 of these athletes went on to compete in the NCAA Pentathlon. After a draining five event first day, the completion for Priscilla wasn't any easier in the High Jump where she finished third with a jump of 1.78m (5'-10"). The first 3 jumpers all achieved the same height, placement was decided on countback.

Senior Phobay Kutu-Akoi rounded out the team scoring by finishing 6th and scoring 3 points in the 60 meter dash with a time of 7.55 seconds. In addition Phobay also made the 200 meter final running a PR of 24.55 seconds in the prelims.

Our team also recorded season bests in both the 4 x 400 meters and 4 x 800 meters of 3:52.31 and 9:10.93 respectively.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Why We Need Your Help: This Is Not Your Daddy's Big East

The Big East conference was founded in 1979, many readers of this blog did not have the pleasure of competing in the Big East, but for those who did, the Big East bares scant resemblance to the conference that began in 1979.

In 1984 I competed in my first indoor Big East championships in the Carrier Dome in Syracuse. Back then the conference was made up of a total of nine teams. Today we now have 16 teams filled with teams who are highly comepetitive on the national level! For those who are interested in the evolution of the conference you can visit the Big East Wikipedia page

How has the conference changed in the past 30 years? Well now you have to qualify just to compete in the conference and the standards aren't easy. Try and remember what your PRs were and see if you could have qualified, never mind scoring. Visit the Big East Qualification Standards

So what's the point of this post? Well we need your help to be come more competitive. This past November, Tom Farrell has graciously agreed to lend his name to a $100,000 fund raising effort. Times aren't easy right now, so your support is graciously appreciated.

If you'd like to contribute, please feel free to contact Coach Hurt at the Track Office in St John's:
Tel: 718-9906159
We won't say no to checks made out to St John's University and mailed to:
St John's University
Attn: Track Office
8000 Utopia Parkway
Jamaica, NY 11439