During spring break, while many students were visiting family and traveling, the distance medley relay (DMR) team traveled to the NCAA DII Indoor Track and Field Championship in Birmingham, Ala. where they placed fourth, received All-American Honors and broke the school record by 15 seconds.
Coach Steve Guymon and the DMR team, juniors Kelsey Taylor and Tammy Kim, and seniors Dallis Bailey and Ewa Zaborowska, arrived in Alabama on Wednesday, March 11, and visited the Boys & Girls club.
On Thursday, March 12 the team attended a banquet dinner where Zaborowska was presented with the NCAA Elite 89 award.
“It’s called Elite 89 because the NCAA sponsors 89 championships across all levels and all sports,” assistant athletic director for sports information Scott Goode said. “They take the athlete with the highest grade point average among those who qualify for the national competition.”
Zaborowska is the first student from Harding to ever receive the Elite 89 award. She has been to Nationals before, but this time she was able to attend and compete alongside her teammates.
“Ewa has been, of course, because she’s a six-time All-American so she’s used to that scene, whereas us other three, I felt like I was being dropped off at kindergarten, like ‘this is so new I don’t know what to expect,’ but I enjoyed every second of it,” Bailey said.
The DMR team has been running together for the past three years. According to Bailey, they are close because of the time spent training and going to meets together.
“It’s cool to be able to race with them because we’re workout partners,” Taylor said. “I love cross-country because you score as a team, so when it comes to a relay where you can work together and it’s not just you in an individual race, but a group effort, it’s beneficial, it’s more rewarding I guess.”
Each of the ladies runs a different leg, and all lean on each other to finish the race for their team. During the relay, Taylor, who ran the 1200-leg, handed the stick off to Kim, who ran the 400-leg and then handed it off to Bailey, who ran the 800-leg and then handed the stick off to Zaborowska who, according to coach Guymon, took them from 11th place to 4th place. The team finished the relay in a time of 11 minutes, 32.15 seconds, breaking a Harding school record.
“It was a very, very good race, all the girls, each one of them did their job and to watch them succeed and come back with an All-American honor was very rewarding, and they deserved it,” Guymon said.
