The Dartmouth women's distance medley relay team of Alexi Pappas '12, Megan Krumpoch '14, Chrissy Supino '12 and Abbey D'Agostino '14 placed third at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships on Friday night. D'Agostino also competed in the 3,000-meter run, placing eighth overall. Both the relay squad and D'Agostino individually earned All-American honors.
The relay team missed out on first place by just over a second, running a time of 11:06.29. The University of Washington won the race with a time of 11:05.20, and the University of Oregon placed second in 11:05.85.
Dartmouth stayed in the middle of the pack for most of the race and entered D'Agostino's 1,600-meter anchor leg in seventh place. D'Agostino kicked it into high gear and brought the Big Green up into the top three with a relay split of 4:35.75, second-fastest among anchor legs. D'Agostino finished by out-kicking Georgetown University's Emily Infeld who would go on to win the 3,000 meters the next night on the home stretch to clinch third place for the Big Green.
Pappas began the race with a split of 3:26.15 in the 1,200 meters, handing off in sixth place. Next came the 400-meter leg, which Krumpoch ran in 55.85 seconds. Supino ran the 800-meter leg in 2:08.56, keeping the Big Green in contention and setting up D'Agostino's strong finish.
The Big Green's time was the third-fastest in program history, though at championship meets such as the NCAAs, place, not time, is most important.
On Saturday night, D'Agostino finished eighth out of 14 runners in the 3,000 meters. D'Agostino ran a time of 9:18.54, just over three seconds behind Infeld, the Hoya senior, who ran 9:15.44.
The race was a tactical one with seven runners within half a second of the leader entering the final lap. The top 10 runners all finished within five seconds of each other.
The meet was team-scored, and Dartmouth ended up in a tie for 34th place with seven points six from the relay team and one from D'Agostino in the 3,000-meter run. Oregon won its third consecutive national title with 49 points, well clear of the University of Kansas, which finished as the runner-up with 30 points.
