DMR, 4x400 relays both earn points

BOSTON, Mass. (February 16, 2013) – Freshman Alyssa Lambert (Manchester, N.H.) ran the 1,000 meters in 3:02.16 to finish fourth on Saturday afternoon, the best finish of the day for the Franklin Pierce University women's track and field team in its inaugural trip to the Northeast-10 Conference Indoor Track and Field Championship. Franklin Pierce earned 13 points on the afternoon to finish 11th in the 11-team meet, held at Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center.

Lambert's run was the best finish of the day for the Ravens, as fourth-place netted the squad five points. She knocked 3.7 seconds off her previous best time of the year, set at Tufts on Feb. 11, and posted a mark good enough to qualify her for next week's New England Championships.

At half the distance, in the 500 meters, graduate student Amanda Kauffman (Rockland, Mass.) picked up two points with a seventh-place finish (1:20.17). The time was nearly identical to her fastest run of the year, bettering her time from Smith College on Dec. 1 by one-tenth of a second.

In the relay events, Franklin Pierce's strongest finish came from the distance medley relay squad, which placed fifth (13:29.45) to pick up four points. Kauffman ran the first leg, followed by sophomore Ashley Pietrowski (Ware, Mass.) and freshman Sarah Barnard (Hopkinton, Mass.), before Lambert ran the anchor leg. The 4x400-meter relay team of freshman Nicki Zeigler (Circleville, N.Y.) to junior Jannice Sundqvist (Harnosand, Sweden) to freshman Jackie Price (Brick, N.J.) to Lambert contributed two more points to Franklin Pierce's afternoon by finishing seventh (4:12.54).

Sundqvist put together a pair of runs in dash events which missed scoring more points (top eight in each event score points) for the Ravens by a combined total of less than three seconds. She placed 10th in the 400-meter dash (59.48), just 1.57 seconds out of the points, and 16th in the 200-meter dash (26.49), 0.97 seconds out of the points. In the 200m, there was not much separation in the area right around the points cutoff, as seventh through 16th places all wound up within one second of each other.

Team-wise, in its final season at the Division II level before leaving for Division I, Massachusetts Lowell finished with 216 points on its way to a blowout victory to successfully defend the 2012 title and win its fourth championship in five years. The River Hawks nearly doubled up second-place American International (123) and did collect more than twice as many points as third-place Stonehill (101). New Haven (96) and Southern Connecticut State (67) rounded out the top five.

The Ravens return to the track on Friday, Feb. 22 at the 2013 NEICAAA Indoor Championships (New England Championships), a two-day meet hosted at Boston University's Track and Tennis Center.

For more information on Franklin Pierce Athletics, please visit the official website of Franklin Pierce Athletics (http://athletics.franklinpierce.edu). Also be sure to follow the Ravens through the Department of Athletics' official Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/FranklinPierceRavens), its YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/franklinpiercesports) and its Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/FPUathletics). Fans wishing to purchase Franklin Pierce track and field apparel can do so at the Department of Athletics' brand new online store (http://athletics.franklinpierce.edu/store).