Gray	Curit
Polakowski	Esernio

Dorchester, Mass., freshman earns Field Rookie of the Week honors for first time
4x400 collects second straight women's Relay of the Week selection

EASTON, Mass. (December 10, 2012) – The Stonehill College women's 4x400-meter relay team and freshman Adrienne Thornton (Dorchester, Mass./John D. O'Bryant) have both earned weekly honors from the Northeast-10 Conference for women's track and field on Monday.

Stonehill's 4x400-meter relay team earned women's Relay of the Week for the second-straight week, while Thornton received Field Rookie of the Week honors after a standout debut in helping lead the Skyhawks to a second place team finish at the Reggie Poyau Invitational, hosted by Brandeis University, on Friday night.

Stonehill won the 4x400-meter relay on Friday night by over a ten second margin ahead of second place and rival University of Massachusetts Lowell with a time of 4:02.7 – 0.8 shy of the school record. Running the event for the Skyhawks were freshman Jordan Gray (Warwick, R.I./Toll Gate) with a 58.7-second split on the lead leg, followed by sophomore Maria Curit (Biddeford, Maine/Biddeford) on the second leg in 60-seconds flat and junior Katie Polakowski (Essex Junction, Vt./Essex) ran the third leg in 61.6-seconds before freshman Jeana Esernio (Stony Brook, N.Y./Ward Melville) completed the anchor leg in 62.4.

Thornton

Gray, Polakowski and Esernio are part of their second Relay of the Week selection after running the event last week at the UMass Boston Invitational to earn the award for the first time, while Curit is part of her first Relay of the Week selection.

Thornton earns her first weekly award following a standout collegiate debut at Brandeis on Friday night. She won the weight throw with a school-record shattering distance of 47-feet, 6.25-inches, winning the event by over eight and a half feet and topping the previous school record by nearly seven feet. Thornton also placed second in the shot put with a throw of 37-feet, 6.75-inches – less than three inches shy of a second school record.

Thornton broke the previous school mark in the weight throw of 40-feet, 9.75-inches set by Meghan Rocha at the Tufts Stampede on February 6, 2010.

Stonehill is off until Saturday, January 19, when it competes at the URI Sorlien Invitational, hosted by the University of Rhode Island, at Mackal Fieldhouse in Kingston, R.I.

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