The Eastern Michigan University Track and Field teams went on the road to North Carolina State University for the 2024 Raleigh Relays Meet. The meet was featured primarily by the distance events and also had a few field events.
Eastern Michigan had runners in the women’s 800, 1500, 5000, and 10000 meters, while having runners in the men’s 800 and 1500 meters. There were also two events that the Eagles had athletes in that covered the field side of things, which were the men’s long jump and triple jump.
Track Side:
Many schools participated, and the Eagles saw two personal bests in the women’s 800 meters, including Tabatha Walford (Northamptonshire, England) and Sophie Emin (Easton, Pennsylvania), who clocked times of 2:11.77 and 2:13.35, respectively. The 1500 saw freshman Paige Marchant (London, Ontario) have a time of 4:21.56, which is the eighth-best time in Eastern Michigan history.
The 5000 was the story of the meet in the women’s section of the track. Esme Davies (Lake District, England) had a personal best of 16:26.15, which was the eighth-best 5000m time in the history of the program. Eastern had two other runners break 17 minutes in the 5000, including Marta Moreno (Wassenaar, Netherlands) and Anita Zaro (Timișoara, Romania), finishing with times of 16:34.29 and 16:44.76.
The 10000 only saw one Eastern athlete race, and that was Sofia Ivanko (Buenos Aires, Argentina) who finished in 44th place overall with a time of 35:23.57.
On the men’s side, there were not as many races, but the Eagles had four athletes who will remember this meet as a successful one in the 800, with Marcus Kemp (Kitchener, Ontario), Ronnie Brandal (Huron, Ohio), Ty Dailey (Phoenix, Maryland.) and Lachlan Cornelius (Queensland, Brisbane, Australia) all posting personal bests of 1:49.63, 1:49.68, 1:53.80 and 1:54.86.
The 1500 was the other event on the men’s side. This saw Cornelius break a PR of 3:56.65. Linus Vennemann (Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, Germany) led the way for Eastern in this event with a time of 3:49.13.
Field Side:
It was a homecoming for Eric Haddock Jr. (Raleigh, North Carolina) who would go on to finish with a 7.34m long jump and a 14.89 triple jump to place in fourth and sixth place in these respective events.
Up Next:
The Eagles will head to two different meets, with the Jim Click Invitational for distance in Tucson, Arizona, and the Spartan Invitational in East Lansing.
For more information on the Eastern Michigan track and field programs, you can visit the Echo’s website.
