NEW LONDON, Conn. – Keely Giordano, Caroline Cooper, Drea Defreitas, and Molly Lu McKellar teamed up to break a 17-year-old 4x100 meter relay record while Aidan Law finished second in the long jump just a hundredth of a meter behind the winner as the Keene State College outdoor track and field teams competed at the New England Division III Championships at Nitchman Track, hosted by the United States Coast Guard Academy.

Giordano, Cooper, Defreitas, and McKellar ran to a ninth-place finish in that event in 49.66, missing scoring by only five hundredths of a second, and in the process broke the previous Keene State school record set by Laura Kintz, Kimber Stannard, Kaley Griffin, and Shaylin Deignan of 50 seconds even set in 2008.  It is the impressive 15th different school record set this year across both indoor and outdoor seasons, not counting ones that have been broken multiple times.  Colby's foursome of Tally Zeller, Fiona Mejico, Simone Waheed, and Charlotte Brake-Hoffman set a facility and meet record of 46.68 while winning the women's 4x100 meter relay, with the Mules finishing seventh as a team just ahead of eighth-place University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

Individually, Defreitas – only a first year – just missed scoring in a pair of jumping events while posting a pair of season-best marks, finishing ninth of 25 in the long jump (5.29 meters) and 10th of 28 in the triple jump (11.22 meters).

KSC's 4x800 meter relay team of Bryn Dickinson, Anna O'Reilly, Sarah Ames, and Autumn Boisvert placed 11th of 23 in 9:55.32, just .13 from a top ten finish, while McKellar was 16th among 27 runners in the 100-meter hurdles in 15.70.  Keely Giordano ran the 100-meter dash in 12.58 and the 200-meter dash in 26.12, both events she previously broke school records in this season as a rookie.  Maggie St. John finished the 5,000 meters in 15th, posting a time of 18:40.07.

The Owls did see an event record set by Breanne Lucey in 2006 broken on this day, as junior Grace McDonough of Connecticut College finished in 4:24.12, edging out Lucey's 4:27.63 posted 19 years ago.  McDonough's time broke the facility record by over 12 seconds.

On the men's side, KSC got scoring performances from both Law and Eden Damis.  Law finished second among 26 competitors in the long jump, posting a mark of 7.10 meters – just .01 meters behind Western Connecticut State University's Anthony Paulino, who hadn't posted a mark better than 6.98 this season before today and was fourth in the event at last week's conference championships.  Law's school record mark of 7.24 meters set on April 18 at the University of Massachusetts Lowell remains tied for the 13th-best mark in Division III in the event with 11 days to go in the season.

Damis added a top-third finish (eighth) of 24 in the triple jump with a 13.75 meter mark, .25 meters further than last week.  Jayden Baker threw the shot put 13.41 meters while the 4x800 meter relay team of Tyler Bolaske, Jonathan MacQuarrie, Nicholas Terranova, and Keith O'Donnell was 11th of 23 in 8:00.18.

The Owl men finished with nine points to place in a 28th-place tie of 36 scoring teams.  The women did not score.  Fellow LEC competitor University of Southern Maine placed fourth on both sides (men 60 points, women 46 points), with the UMass-Dartmouth men notching an eighth-place team finish (33.5) and the Rhode Island College women tied for ninth (34).  Wesleyan University (Conn.) took the men's team title with 80 points, winning by five-and-a-half points over Tufts University, while Tufts' women's team compiled 94 points to take the women's title, 34 more than Connecticut College.

"We went to this meet with specific targets and accomplished a good deal," said Owls head coach Dan Roark.  "In the jumps Aidan getting second and Eden scoring, as well as Drea getting some big personal bests was great to see.  In the relays, the women's 4x100 came up with a school record we have been chasing all year.  And the men's, we had some last minute changes, but overall had people step up.  It is a hard turnaround from a championship Sunday to Friday."

KSC travels to the University of Massachusetts next weekend (Friday, May 9-Saturday, May 10) for the NEICAAA (All-New England) championships and to Williams College for the Farley Inter-Regional Extravaganza (FIRE) meet.