Yale Athletics

On Saturday, Yale’s men’s and women’s track and field teams rounded off their indoor regular season split between two meets. Some members of the team shipped up to Boston to compete in Boston University’s David Hemery Valentine Invitational, while the rest of the team stayed put in New Haven for Yale’s Giegengack Invitational.

This was the team’s fifth and final weekend of the indoor regular season. The team’s first meet took place in New Haven in early December, and the remaining four meets picked up where they left off in New Haven four weekends ago and continued without a break. After facing a mix of Connecticut and Ivy League opponents early in the season, the team has spent the past three weekends splitting up between Boston, New Haven and New York to find the best competition available. However, when they tie up their laces next time around, the field will be much narrower at the Ivy League Indoor Track and Field Championships in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“The atmosphere of HEPs is just, for lack of a better word, electric in the sense that everyone feels a different energy in the air,” men’s team captain Matt Appel ’24 wrote to the News, speaking of the Ivy League Heptagonal Cross Country Championships. “The stakes are higher, the competition is better, but the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter. Some of the best performances of the entire year come out of HEPs, and it isn’t a coincidence.”

Both the men’s and women’s teams will head into “HEPs,” short for heptagonals, which reflects the fact that in the original Ivy League Championships there were only seven teams, coming off performances filled with personal bests and all-time top-10 finishes. 

On the men’s side of events, Isiah Udofia ’26 kicked the PR’s off with a 7.38 meter leap in the long jump, putting him at sixth on Yale’s all-time top performances. There were two more in the 60 meter dash, with Kit Colson ’25 snagging fourth on Yale’s all-time list with a finish of 6.80 seconds and Christian Pereira ’25 taking seventh all-time with a time of 6.83 seconds. 

In the middle distances, Colin Quinn ’25 and Aaron Miller ’25 performed similarly, finishing with PR’s of 47.68 and 47.81 seconds to take fourth and sixth on Yale’s all-time list, respectively. 

In the longer distances, Martin Riddell ’24 set a personal best with a 14:27 finish in the 5k, as did Leo Brewer ’25, Jack Sendek ’25 and Ronan Luff ’27 in the mile with 4:03, 4:10 and 4:12 finishes, respectively. Sean Kay ’24 also set a personal best in the 3k with an 8:06 finish good for 10th on Yale’s all-time list.

“Laying down some solid marks before HEPs definitely plays a role in boosting our confidence going into the big meet,” Appel wrote to the News. “Knowing what we did well leading up to those big marks helps but so does having two weeks to taper our training so we can peak when we need to.”

On the women’s side of events, first-year Juliette Kosmont ’27 broke a school record, running a 7.55 second 60 meter dash. She was the fourth first-year on the women’s team to break a school record this season. 

Meanwhile, in the mid-distance events, Molly Harding ’26 set a PR in the 400 meter with a 57.41-second finish, and Lola Isom ’27 set a PR in the 500 meter with a 1:16.45 finish. 

In longer distances, Kylie Goldfarb ’25 set a PR in the mile with a finish of 5:01.25, and Marina Carlos ’26 finished with a PR in the 3k with a time of 10:41.68. 

In the field events, Eileen Yang ’24 tied her PR with a 3.85m vault, and Sophie Wright ’24 set an 11.69m PR in the triple jump.

“The women had two competitive opportunities this weekend at the Valentine Invite in Boston and the Giegengack Invite at home at Coxe Cage,” women’s coach Taryn Sheehan wrote to the News. “It’s not always ideal to split up your team but as we head into championship season it’s imperative to make sure each of our athletes have the opportunities we need to be at their best.  The competitive environments proved to be fruitful on the women’s side as we had another record-breaking weekend for the women led by Juliette Kosmont setting a new school record in the women’s 60-meter dash with a time of 7.55.”

With HEPs not taking place until Feb. 24 and 25, the Bulldogs will have a weekend off to train and prepare for the meet. This will be their first weekend off since Jan. 13 and 14.

Women’s captain Isabella Bergloff ’24 provided some insight as to her team’s mindset and goals over these next two weeks.

“We put in a lot of work in the offseason and at the beginning of the season, there isn’t much more we can change in the next two weeks aside from trusting that everything we’ve been doing will set us up for success,” Bergloff wrote to the News. “We are going to work to maintain what we’ve been doing and really emphasize recovery, and use the atmosphere of a big meet to see some record performances to cap off our indoor season.”

Following the Ivy League Indoor Championships, the Bulldogs will continue their indoor postseason at the ECAC/IC4A Championships at Boston University on March 1 through 3 followed by the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships at the TRACK at New Balance, also in Boston, on March 8 and 9.