The Northern Michigan University women’s track and field team came up short in the W-C-W Tri Meet to host Saginaw Valley State and Wayne State down in University Center, Michigan this past weekend.

NMU was missing some athletes for the meet with injuries and illness, and took third place out of three teams with a total of 33.5 points. SVSU won the meet with 72 points, and Wayne State finished in the middle with 61.5. Despite the loss, two program records were broken by individual Wildcats.

Izabelle Peterson set the school record in the 300m dash with a second place time of 40.54, and the 4x300m relay team of Peterson, Hannah Jones, Akirah Venerable and Sydney Romps broke the other with another second place time of 2:46.25. Venerable and Romps finished just behind Peterson in the 300m dash, placing in third and fourth respectively.

Jones got one of two NMU first places for the meet, outracing the rest in the 400m dash with a time of 58.53, her best mark of the season. Crystal Walker was the other winner for the ‘Cats, claiming first in the 60m hurdles at a time of 8.82. Ellyse Wolrath came in second at 8.93.

Northern also received multiple runner-up finishes in the field events. Walker got second place in high jump, Calli Rechsteiner was second in the pole vault and Leah Root was second in the triple jump.

NMU is back on the road this weekend on Friday, Feb. 11 and Saturday, Feb. 12 to participate in the GVSU Big Meet in Allendale, Michigan. Friday is the elite portion of the meet, where select athletes had to qualify. Everyone is participating on Saturday in the meet. NMU coach Jenny Ryan expects some of the athletes who missed last weekend to be back for this meet, and remains hopeful that the Wildcats are at full strength at the GLIAC Championships in a couple of weeks.

“(Gaining confidence) is really important, and this meet gives us a chance to keep that going,” Ryan said. “We’ve been rolling forward, we’ve had a few issues with injury and illness. But overall, we’ve been having some improved results, so this will definitely keep the ball rolling to go into the conference meet with some good confidence for sure.”