Wake Forest Athletics
Track & Field Takes Aim At ACC Indoor Championships
2/24/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Track and Field
Feb. 24, 2010
ACC Championship Website | Video Preview with Coach Bennett
WINSTON-SALEM, NC - The Wake Forest track & field team will begin competition at the ACC Indoor Championships this Thursday at Rector Field House on the campus of Virginia Tech.
The Deacons are fresh-off a good showing last weekend in Rector Field House at the Virginia Tech Challenge and looked poised for a good meet.
The combined event athletes will get the meet started on Thursday at noon. Friday's action will feature a number of preliminary events along with a select group of finals. The rest of the finals will be contested on Saturday beginning at 10 am.
For fans that cannot make the trip to Blacksburg, Va., this weekend, theACC.com will provide a live video stream of the action on both Friday and Saturday. The video is scheduled to begin at 3 pm on Friday and Noon on Saturday.
The Wake Forest men have been led so far this season by a trio of seniors in Jon Reid, Brent LaRue and Thomas Sensing.
Reid has turned in a pair of solid performances the last two weeks in both the 200m and 400m dashes. At the Armory Duals on Feb. 13, Reid turned in an NCAA Provisional time of 47.14 in the 400m dash to win the event. That time is the third-best time in the conference this season. He also finished fourth last week at the VT Challenge with a season-best 21.88 in the 200m dash. That time has him ranked ninth in the ACC.
LaRue has turned in team-best times in both the 60m hurdles and the 60m dash as well as setting the pole vault school record twice so far this year. He took second a year ago in the 60m hurdles at the ACC Championships with a personal-best time of 7.98.
However, the event LaRue will most likely be a threat in is the heptathlon. He is the 2007 ACC Indoor heptathlon champion and he earned All-American honors a year ago. LaRue also totaled a personal-best 5,429 points in the heptathlon at the ACC Championships last winter and finished third overall.
Sensing is coming off a tremendous outdoor season in 2009 that saw him make a trip to the NCAA Championships. So far this season, he has continued to improve upon his personal-best in the shot put, topping out with a mark of 54-6.50. That mark puts him right in the mix this weekend.
The 4x400m relay should also make some noise this weekend. Despite losing All-American Michael Bingham off last season's ACC Championship team, LaRue and Reid will likely be joined by Tyler Dodds and Allan Lunkenheimer and the team should once again be a threat for a title.
The women also feature a trio of seniors leading the way in the sprints. Caroline Vaughn, Alex Gove and Nicole Castronuova all turned in season-best performances last weekend and all seemed to be peeking at the right time.
Vaughn made her second-straight finals of the 60m hurdles at the VT Challenge after running a season-best 8.46 in the prelims. That time is just .03 seconds off her school-record which she set last year at the ACC Indoor Championships during the pentathlon competition.
Gove also turned in a season-best in the prelims of the 60m hurdles with a time of 8.88 seconds. She also holds the Deacs' top 400m time this season of 56.62 which she turned in a the Armory Duals two weeks ago.
Castronuova ran a solid 200m race last weekend at the VT Challenge, clipping the tape at 24.70 to finish seventh. She has also turned in good times in the 300m, 400m and 600m races this season. The Jackson, NJ, native will run a key leg for the Deacons in the 4x400 relay as well.
The mid-distance events will also feature a couple of Wake's bests as sophomores Molly Binder and Dina Nosenko have hit their stride over the last few weeks. Binder has turned in three straight solid performances in the 800m and 600m races. She currently holds the sixth-best time in the conference this season in the 800m at 2:10.92.
Nosenko ran a strong mile at the Armory Duals two weeks ago, winning the event with a time of 4:49.74. That time places her seventh coming into the meet.
Anna Nosenko will be Wake's main threat in the distance events. She holds the second-best time in the conference in both the 3,000m and 5,000m events. Anna ran an indoor-best 16:20.39 in a star-studded 5,000m race at the Washington Husky Invite on Feb. 12, and also won the VT Elite Meet's 3,000m run with a time of 9:28.04. Both of those times have provisional qualified her for the NCAA Championships.
Flashresults.com will be streaming live results throughout the weekend and fans can check back to www.WakeForestSports.com for a complete recap at the end of each day.
Players Mentioned
