From L to R: Maria Curit, Jill Alves, Sarah Wilson and Christen Carrier posted the fastest 4x800-meter relay time among all NCAA Division II teams last season and shattered the Stonehill school record.

Skyhawks post top 4x800 meter relay among all NCAA Division II programs during 2012 outdoor track & field season

EASTON, Mass. (November 26, 2012) – Four members of the Stonehill College women's outdoor track and field team will be honored by Accusplit for posting the fastest time in the 4x800 meter relay last season among all NCAA Division II teams at the U.S Track and Field Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCAAA) Convention, in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday, December 20.

Recent graduates Jill Alves (Whitman, Mass./Whitman-Hanson) and Christen Carrier (Manchester, N.H./Manchester Central) teamed up with rising sophomores Maria Curit (Biddeford, Maine/Biddeford) and Sarah Wilson (West Suffield, Conn./Suffield) to place 13th overall at the 177th edition of the Penn Relays, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, in front of a crowd of over 35,000 at historic Franklin Field on Saturday, April 28 with a school record time by more than ten seconds.

Curit opened up the relay with a split of 2:19.5, Alves followed and posted the fastest split on the squad running the second-leg in 2:16.6, Wilson ran the third-leg in 2:18 and Carrier capped off the record breaking run with a 2:17.1 split as the anchor-leg for a total time of 9:11.51.

The Skyhawks 4x800-meter relay team shattered the previous school record of 9:26.14 set by Alves, Lindsay Booth (Franklin, Mass./Franklin), Hilary Curtis (Scarborough, Maine) and Kristina Coriaty (Brockton, Mass) on May 9, 2009 at the New England Championships, hosted by UMass Amherst.

"One of the issues we run into with the 4x800 meter relay is that it is not an event that is contested at the NCAA's, so we don't run it fresh very often," said head coach Karen Boen. "We always put our concentration on the DMR [distance medley relay] at the NCAA's. However, for these women to take it that seriously and run a school record performance was very commendable considering the circumstances of the crowd at the Penn Relays that day. This particular group decided to sacrifice their other events that weekend to break the school record."

Accusplit has been the leader in the professional stopwatch and timing industry since 1972 with its invention of the first digital stopwatch. The company's name is based on the stopwatch's function of "accurately splitting" the time. The USTFCCCA is a non-profit professional organization representing cross country and track & field coaches of all levels. The organization represents over 8,000 coaching members encompassing 94% of all NCAA track & field programs (DI, DII, and DIII) and includes members representing the NAIA as well as a number of state high school coaches associations.