Gloucester's Natasha Smith may be a new kid on the block in NCAA Division I track and field competition, but the.Brown University freshman has proven herself a force to be reckoned with.
Following up on her victory in last winter's Ivy League.Indoor Pentathlon.Championships, Smith won the heptathlon during her league's track and field championships at Yale this past weekend.
Smith's overall score of 4,992 in the seven-event, two-day competition topped runner-up and Harvard junior Shannon Flahive by more than 250 points. It easily surpassed the 4,500-point mark required to compete in the ECAC championships later this month.
Throughout Saturday's completion, Smith fought a back-and-forth battle with Flahive and Dartmouth junior Karen Woolley, finishing third in the 100-meter hurdles in 15.06 (834 Points), before tying Woolley for first in the high jump at 5-51/4 (806 points).
But it was in event No. 3, the shot put, that Smith finally jumped into the lead with a personal and competition-best toss of 37-51/4, good for 622 points. She then closed out the first day with a 26.38 second-place finish in the 200, worth 764 points.
Heading into yesterday's second day of the competition, Smith's 3,026 points led all scorers, with only Flahive at 2,973.and Wooley at 2,890 close enough to mount any real challenge..
Time was running out on the rest of the field, and of the three remaining events, it was only in the long jump where Smith had shown any vulnerability over the course of the season. The Brown freshman's two nearest challengers would need to best her score by more than 150 points in the long jump to have any chance of keeping her from taking her place at the No. 1 spot on the victory stand.
But Smith was not about to be denied.
Despite posting a sub-par 15-63/4, 490-point performance in the long jump, the 19-year-old.countered with a personal-record throw of 136-5 in the javelin (698 points) to take a huge lead with one event remaining, the 800-meter run.
As in last winter's pentathlon championships at Cornell in upstate New York, Smith needed only to run a controlled 2:23.43 in the 800, worth 778 points, to nail down her second Ivy League multi-event title in as many seasons, as well as her second selection as First Team All Ivy in track and field.
Smith's rapid ascension to the top of her league in multi-event competition may have caught nearly everyone in the Ivy League by surprise, but not Gloucester track coach Jim Munn, who coached her from seventh grade to her graduation from high school.
"There was never a doubt in my mind," Munn said. "That this remarkable young lady had the heart, intelligence, talent, and determination to do something special not only in track and field, but also in life beyond athletics.
"People may not have known much about Natasha Smith before the indoor season, but after this, her heptathlon victory at Yale, they certainly know who she is now."
Next up for Smith will be either the ECACs or a series of track meets in England involving members of Brown university's men's and women's team.
