Women's track hosts Eastern and Western Saturday
The women's track team will host its only outdoor meet of the season at noon Saturday at Lyle Bennett Track.
The Chippewas compete against Mid-American Conference and inner-state rivals Western Michigan and Eastern Michigan.
"This is our only chance this season to show the CMU student body and fans what we have got," said senior Kelly McClure. "We focused more on individual group efforts this week in practice to prepare for the meet."
Western Michigan last competed at the Alabama Relays last weekend and the Broncos' Danielle Brown was named MAC Athlete of the Week after winning the 400-meter hurdles.
WMU's 4x400m relay team also turned in a time of three minutes, 40.21 seconds, which was good enough to qualify for NCAA Regionals.
Eastern Michigan competed last weekend in Palo Alto, Calif., at the Stanford Invitational. Sophomore Beverly Elcock finished fourth in the 800m run with an NCAA regional-qualifying and personal-best time of 2:09.61.
Junior Tanisha Johnson is coming off a performance where she won two events at the Toledo Invitational. Freshman Stephanie Hurley and sophomore Danielle Dakroub also had first-place finishes to help CMU tie for second place weekend.
Redshirt freshman Rachel Wittum said the team wants to raise its competitive level after the first meet and feed off the talent of other teams.
"We had a team meeting this week about competing and taking it to the next level," she said. "All of the teams in the MAC are getting stronger and better and we need to focus on competing against their athletes and not necessarily time and measurements."
Wittum said the team is excited to be competing outdoors in front of the home crowd for the first time in a long time.
CMU will be back on the road competing in Knoxville, Tenn., next weekend.
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