Newton South Girls to Run 4x1M at NIN

Did you miss the Newton South girls stunning meet record, best in the nation, best ever in New England 4x800 last Friday night? The NE champions are stepping it up to run the 4 x 1 Mile at Nike Indoor Nationals and -- hard as it is to believe -- they might be even better at the 4x1M than the 4x800.

The quartet of Juliet Ryan-Davis, Kathy O'Keefe, Melanie Fineman, and Bridget Dahlberg ran 9:04.13 at the New England Championships -- the #1 time in the nation this year and the #7 performance all-time. According to the entry list for the NIN meet taking place Friday-Sunday, Ryan-Davis will be the alternate and NE 2M runner-up Kelsey Karys will run a leg.

Here are the season-best times for the five runners:

(Ryan-Davis) 5:18.65 (2/05/09)

Karys        5:09.73 (2/01/09)
O'Keefe      5:18.17 (1/07/09)
Fineman      5:08.72 (2/27/09)
Dahlberg     4:56.16 (2/27/09)

Total       20:32.46

O'Keefe can run much faster - her outstanding times in the 1000 prove that -- and the team shows absolutely no sign of running out of gas at the end of the season; quite the opposite.

Last year's NIN winning team ran 20:47, and Newton South can clearly go faster than that, even without PR performances. The national and meet record is 19:59.24, set in 2005 by Saratoga Springs. While that is probably out of reach, a time between 20:20 and 20:30 is doable. Based on last week's race, NS doesn't need another team nipping at its heels to run fast.

The girls 4 x 1 Mile is scheduled for 12:25 p.m. on Saturday. If you want to watch the action, get there early as the meet will almost certainly sell out.

For more about the 4x800, here's a nice article in the local paper with extensive quotes from Coach Steve McChesney about the team's attitude going into the New England meet.



Daily News Tribune: South girls' 4x800 set nation's standard