Women’s sports working hard through Springbreak

By Curran Daly

While school stopped for students over the past week, not everyone was given a break. A few of HSU women’s sports teams had a busy week.

Women’s track and field competed at the Hornet Invite in Sacramento. With multiple standout performances.

Most notable was track athlete, Alyssabeth DeJerez. DeJerez ran the 400m hurdles in 58.84 seconds. Her time automatically qualified her for nationals and improved on the Humboldt State record that she already held in the event. DeJerez was named CCAA student athlete of the week.

This was not Dejerez’s first great performance of the season. Earlier in the season DeJerez was also named the CCAA Female Track Athlete of the Week for her performance at the Kim Duyst Invitational at Stanislaus State.

“I got to Humboldt with this determination to make a name for myself,” DeJerez said. “I kinda sacrificed a lot. I don’t go out on the weekends, I build my diet around how I want to perform, I have to prep my body and roll out.”

Humboldt State Women’s track and field team is ranked number two in the country. Coach Scott Pesch believes it is his runner’s hard work and his fellow coaches that have helped the women’s program reach its number two ranking.

“I gotta thank my coaches,” Pesch said. “I can’t do this alone that’s for sure.”

Women’s track is not the only nationally ranked women’s team on Humboldt’s campus. The Humboldt women’s softball team has been ranked number one in the nation in recent weeks and the Humboldt Women’s Rowing team opened the season ranked fourth in their pre-season poll.

Women’s rowing had a very busy spring break competing in Sacramento, Davis, and then spending the rest of the break in Newport Beach training before racing in the Berg Cup this past Saturday. Overall, the women’s team spent nine days on the road a busier spring break then they are used too.

“We’ve never trained the entire week of spring break, so this was kinda a new adventure,” Coach Robin Meiggs said. “We raced some of our big division one rivals.”

Those rivals include UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Long Beach State and Sacramento state.

The break was an opportunity to get away from cold early morning practices. The team was able to enjoy practices that started at 9 a.m. and enjoyed weather about 15 degrees warmer than their used to.

On March 25. the women’s rowing team will be participating in the Blue Heron Redwood Sprints Regatta in Eureka. The meet will start at 7:45 a.m. and will end around 10:30 a.m.