On Friday, Feb. 24, the Rowan women’s indoor track and field team competed in the FastTrack Last Chance Meet.
Although there was no team scoring at the event, the 4×400 team for Rowan had an outstanding performance once again. The quartet of Molly Lodge, Kat Pederson, Jasmine Broadway and Nevaeh Lorjuste posted a time of 3:50.98, which broke their own school record that they set at the Valentine Invitational three weeks prior.
“It feels awesome,” Lodge said. “At this point, we expect ourselves to break the record each and every time. It feels like we are rolling now.”
Head Coach Derick “Ringo” Adamson loves the way that his team has been building momentum throughout the season.
“I like the way the season has gone for the team,” Ringo said. “They have so much positive momentum. They are finally seeing how good they really are. We have a meeting every Monday after we have a meet, and I told them just keep improving like they have every week. Manifest getting better all the time. My goal for them is that they qualify for the national championship. I do not care if they are the first team or the last team to qualify. As long as they are in it and have a chance, I will feel really good about it.”
Lodge is beginning to reap the benefits of her great season. The sophomore out of Woodstown, New Jersey has been named an honorable mention for the All-Conference team in both the 60m and 200m dash. In addition, the rest of the 4×400 team was named to the All-Conference second team.
Even though Lodge has received these accolades, she is still not satisfied.
“Honestly, I always want first,” Lodge said. “I want to win in everything I do. The recognition is kind of nice, but I think there are things that will be better for us as a team going forward.”
Lodge feels as though the team can get to where they want to be by the time the spring season starts. In comparison to where they were last year, Lodge believes the team is a lot further ahead.
“We are feeling good for the spring season,” Lodge said. “For reference, what we ran indoors on Friday is equivalent to our outdoor personal record in the 4x400m race. It is really hard to run that fast indoors. We would not have been able to do that last year. Obviously, we want to run faster once we get outside.”
With the indoor season coming to an end, Coach Ringo has to balance how the team trains, as he is already preparing for the spring season.
“For the distance runners, I already gave them four days off,” Ringo said. “We are gonna build volume for them, I’m only going to have them run miles. They will not run on the actual track. I just want them to get stronger and build up their VO₂ max. I’m also gonna try to do the same thing with the sprinters. Then, we will head down to Virginia. We are looking forward to it, Virginia is gonna be a big upside time trial for us.”
With this new regimen of training, Ringo and company are hopeful to start strong in their meet to open the spring season in Lexington, Virginia on March 17.
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