TOWSON, Md. --- Moravian College senior Carly Danoski and sophomore Amanda Crooks have been honored as the Landmark Conference Women's Track & Field Athletes of the Week for their performances last week.
Danoski, who earned her third Landmark Conference Athlete of the Week accolade of the season, set a pair of school records in a two-hour window Friday afternoon at the University of Albany Winter Classic competed at the Ocean Breeze Complex in Staten Island, New York. Danoski began her day by finishing second in the mile run with a school record time of 4:57.19, taking ten seconds off of her previous best in the event and breaking a record that had stood for 19 years at Moravian. The time, converted to 5:00.14 for NCAA purposes on the Track & Field Results Reporting System since it was run on a banked track, is the fifth fastest in NCAA Division III this season, and the top 20 individuals in each event after competition ends on March 7 will compete in the 2020 NCAA Division III Indoor National Championships in North Carolina on March 13-14. Danoski would return to the track a couple of hours later and post a fourth-place time of 2:14.00 in the 800-meter run to break her own school record by 0.13 seconds. She is sixth on TFRRS in the event with her time from the Ithaca College Bomber Invitational being faster than the banked track conversion from Friday.
"After Carly ran 5:06 by herself at Lehigh three weeks ago, it opened both of our eyes to the viability of the mile moving forward," stated Director of Cross Country and Track & Field Jesse Baumann. "We've been looking for a race that she could feed off of and were lucky to finally find one at Ocean Breeze Friday. She actually went out really slow and negative split the last half mile by about six seconds to nearly win the entire meet, which included myriad Division 1 schools. Afterwards she said it felt easy, so we both know she has more in her. She wound up eclipsing Heidi Wolfsberger's school record in the process, the same event she won NCAAs in, which was an added bonus. Carly has known about Heidi for a long time since she has been, and still is a local running legend up in the Scranton area where they're both from, plus she and Greg Jaindl met Heidi at a local race over the summer, so that added a little more meaning to the record for her. As Carly mentioned after the race, it was nice to see the mile record "stay in District two."
"We entered Carly in the 800 as well just in case the mile field wouldn't be competitive," continued Baumann. "After setting the record in the mile we were debating whether to double, but since she was feeling good we decided to play with house money. As it turned out, it was another good field that she patiently moved through and wound up bettering her old school record from 12 months ago making it two-for-two in two hours."
Crooks helped lead the Greyhounds at the Alvernia University PLEX Shootout. Crooks earned the Landmark Conference Field Athlete of the Week honor for her runner-up finish in the high jump at a height of 1.52 meters (4-11.75) in her first competition in the event as a collegiate student-athlete. Crooks also won the 60-meter dash with a school record time of 7.82 seconds in the final, taking one hundredth of a second off of her previous best set back in December. Crooks, who was the Landmark Conference Track Athlete of the Week when she originally set the school record, had the fastest preliminary time as well, running the race in 7.95 seconds.
"Obviously Amanda has been having an extraordinary year in the sprints that included her breaking her own school record in the 60m yet again on Saturday," commented Baumann. "She's been nudging Coach Chris Ossont and the rest of our coaching staff to let her kick the tires on the high jump for a while now, so we finally agreed and started practicing it a few weeks ago. In her first-ever college try at it, she had a clean progression all the way to the 5' bar. She is obviously extremely raw in it so it's a little premature to make any predictions about her ultimate potential, but suffice it to say, we think she can jump well beyond the 5' bar moving forward. She ended up placing second in the meet which is obviously another sign of a very impressive debut in the event."
Moravian is scheduled to return to action on Friday, February 14 in the Fasttrack Invitational at the Ocean Breeze Complex in Staten Island.
