Women's Track & Field: Indoor, outdoor wins complete triple crown

“The moment our class got here we started to see all the hard work [of prior classes] and we got to reap the benefits,” senior distance runner Ashley Higginson said. “We started a tradition of wanting that success and it became, not like this pride, but the expectation from day one of practice pre-season that this is what we’re aiming at.”

The indoor track and field team started its season after the cross country team captured its title. After a successful season, the team went into the Heptagonal Championships as the favorite. The Tigers took an early lead after the first day of competition, which they maintained until Columbia inched ahead with a victory in the 200m on the second day. The Tigers refused to back down, taking the lead back with a 1-2-3 finish in the 3,000m and cementing the win with a record-setting victory in the 4x800 relay. The nail-biting finish left Princeton atop the podium, five points ahead of Columbia.

“For indoor this year one of the keys to success was having a lot of depth in a lot of events,” senior distance runner Sarah Cummings said. “In the past we’ve been more focused and this year we had people really come through in all of the events.”

Higginson affirmed Cummings’ sentiments, highlighting the relay squads as exemplifying the team’s attitude.

“To me [the relays’ success] is such a sign of where our team was at,” she said. “It just shows how much depth our team has — it’s not just these point scorers, but everyone is scoring a lot of points across the board.”

After the emotional win, the team looked forward to its outdoor season, knowing that a championship would deliver the historic triple crown. The season got off to a rocky start, however.

“We had a lot of injuries in the early spring, and things weren’t looking great,” Cummings said. ”It was really unclear as to how we were going to be able to fill in all the holes that we had in the outdoor meet, and if the injured athletes we counted on for points would be able to make it back in time.”

But by Heps, she said, “everything kind of fell into place.” The team picked up points across the board as it had during indoor Heps, trailing Brown by four points after the first day of competition and jumping ahead early on the second day. By the time the 4x800 raced this time around, the victory was essentially assured. The relay team obliterated the meet record by nine seconds, a fitting capstone of an extremely successful year.

“Every single year until this year we won two of three Ivy League crowns, but we never won three,” Higginson said, her voice filled with emotion. “To finally pull it off my senior year when it had been a goal all along was the pinnacle of my career here as an Ivy League athlete and as a Tiger for the team.”

Nine Tigers will participate in the NCAA East Regional this weekend, hoping to qualify for the national championships in June.