Track and field sprints past previous records

Feb. 3, 2014, 12:52 a.m.

Stanford’s track and field teams toppled four previous school records as Cardinal athletes raced to several eye-popping individual performances at the Penn State National Invitational over the weekend.

A four-person team of sophomores Amy Weissenbach, Kristyn Williams and Claudia Saunders along with fifth-year senior Justine Fedronic finished the women’s distance medley relay in 10:54.04 on Friday — a full four seconds faster than the previous school record of 10:58.49 set in 2009. The time also marks the fastest distance medley relay time in the country so far this year.

(SHIRLEY PEFLEY/stanfordphoto.com)
Senior Justine Fedronic (right) was a part of the distance medley relay that beat the previous Stanford relay time by four seconds and is the fastest time in the country thus far this year. (SHIRLEY PEFLEY/stanfordphoto.com)

It was the second school-record performance of the year for Williams, who gave the relay team good separation with her strong 400-meter leg of the relay on Friday after having set a Stanford record in the 400 at the UW Indoor Preview in January. She went on to add a third school-record time on Saturday.

In Saturday’s races, the Cardinal continued to build off of its momentum from Friday as Fedronic and Williams claimed two more school records in the women’s 800-meter and 500-meter invitationals, respectively. In addition, sophomore Steven Solomon contributed a record-breaking performance for the men’s team in the men’s 500-meter invitational.

Fedronic led the Cardinal to a sweep of the top three spots in the 800 with her time of 2:03.25, with sophomores Amy Weissenbach and Claudia Saunders clocking in at 2:05.50 and 2:07.17, respectively, to claim second and third. Both Fedronic’s and Weissenbach’s times topped the previous Stanford record of 2:05.56, which was set by Weissenbach last year. In addition, Fedronic’s time set a new meet record and a new track record, both of which previously stood at 2:03.51.

In the men’s 500 invitational, Solomon ran a 1:01.44 to beat the previous school record of 1:03.40 that had stood since 1983, partly due to the rarity of the 500 event. Williams’ time of 1:10.82 in the women’s 500 invitational will go down as a school record despite the lack of an official list for the event.

At the Razorback Invitational in Fayetteville, Ark., freshman pole-vaulter Dylan Duvio tied a personal record and won the men’s pole vault event with his vault of 17-4½, which also marks the second-best freshman vault in Stanford history.

With the new school records being set and several Cardinal athletes setting new personal records, Stanford’s teams look to be in excellent physical condition moving forward into the U.S. Indoor Championships later this month.

 Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dpark027 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Do-Hyoung Park '16, M.S. '17 is the Minnesota Twins beat reporter at MLB.com, having somehow ensured that his endless hours sunk into The Daily became a shockingly viable career. He was previously the Chief Operating Officer and Business Manager at The Stanford Daily for FY17-18. He also covered Stanford football and baseball for five seasons as a student and served two terms as sports editor and four terms on the copy desk. He was also a color commentator for KZSU 90.1 FM's football broadcast team for the 2015-16 Rose Bowl season.

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