Notre Dame hosted the annual Meyo Invitational this past weekend at Loftus Sports Center.
The Irish — donning green jerseys for the first time in program history — had several highlights throughout the weekend, which featured 42 teams. In the Meyo Mile — the calling card of the Invitational — junior Jessica Harris raced to second place in the women’s race, recording a personal best of 4:37.83 and improving to second in the conference and 13th in the country with her time this season. In the men’s mile, senior Jacob Dumford earned a third-place finish and his own personal record of 4:02.77.
Several other Notre Dame athletes recorded personal bests, including senior Patrick O’Connell’s eighth-place finish in the 800-meter dash, junior Parker English and freshman Grace Cronin in the 400-meter dash and freshman Shae Watkins in the shot put. Senior Anthony Rivers broke his own school record with a 20.27-meter toss in the weight throw Friday — a toss that earned him the fifth-best throw by distance in the ACC and 28th-best in the country this season. Staying in the field, senior Nate Richartz finished first in the pole vault. Although he just missed equaling his personal best, he still holds the third-best mark in the ACC and 12th in the country.
Those were just some of the many positives to take away from the meet, Irish head coach Alan Turner said. Despite these several impressive performances, however, Turner said he is still looking for a more complete performance from his team.
“Overall, we need to get a little bit better,” Turner said. “We had some outstanding individual performances … our quote-unquote ‘superstar’ athletes are getting it together like they should, but if we’re going to do something as a team, we need the bulk of our athletes to step it up. We had some spots where people really stepped it up but had some other sports where, hey, we really didn’t run as well or perform as we should have.”
Facing a plethora of quality programs, the Irish certainly looked overmatched in several areas throughout the meet, especially in the sprints, Turner said. He said he believes running against national competition at the Meyo Invitational was good preparation for future competition as well as a launching point for jumpstarting the team, though he realizes improvements must come soon.
“If you want to finish in the top eight here, you better have a pretty good performance, and these types of meets get you ready for conference, for nationals and so on,” Turner said. “Overall, I think we’re just a little bit behind where we need to be. We got to really tie some things up here in the next few weeks when we come back for the ACCs.”
Next up, the team will split up Friday and Saturday when they travel to the Iowa State Classic in Ames, Iowa, the Spire D-I Invitational in Geneva, Ohio, and the Tiger Paw Invitational in Clemson, South Carolina. Graduate student Molly Seidel also will run at the Millrose Games in New York on Saturday.
