For the second straight weekend an NIU track athlete broke a school record.

This time it was junior heptathlon competitor Natalie Tarter. Tarter won the seven-event competition Chicagoland Championships.

Tarter, a University of Wisconsin transfer, tallied 4,206 points in the event and grabbed a win in the 800 meters to clinch the title over North Central College’s Jocelyn Redlinski by a slim 13 points.

Tarter said breaking the school record is special for her.

“It means a lot because I’ve been through a lot in the past…couple years,” Tarter said. “I’ve transferred and I’ve had three hip surgeries, and it just means a lot to go from being so frustrated and down and being hurt to actually seeing results.“

Head coach Connie Teaberry said it is nice to see Tarter finally find success after so much hardship during her career.

“Natalie Tarter is an exceptional athlete, [an] exceptional athlete,” Teaberry said. “If you look her information up she was one of the top high school students coming out a couple years ago in the 100 and in the hurdles. So, we’re extremely proud that she’s now gotten past her injuries and found an event that she loves and continues showing off her talent as an athlete at NIU.”

Despite Tarter’s record-breaking performance and two more event titles, the Huskies only managed to finish the meet in third place out of 22 with 83 points. NIU was behind DePaul University, which finished first with 156 point, and North Central College with 102.50.

Sophomore thrower Sidra Sherrill won the shot put with a mark of 45-07.75. Sherrill beat everyone else by almost four feet. A fellow Huskie thrower, freshman Olivia Herzog, finished sixth in the shot put with a toss of 40-09.00. Herzog also finished third in the discus with a mark of 136-00, while Sherrill took fifth in the discus with a toss measuring 131-01.

On Saturday, redshirt senior sprinter/hurdler Megan Gregory captured NIU’s third event title on the weekend with her victory in the 100 meter hurdles. Gregory ran a season-best time of 13.92 in the finals.

The Huskies’ 4×100 relay–Gregory, junior Brittany Smith, junior Alexandra Rowe and freshman Alicia Osley–finished second out of 12. The team clocked in at 48.43, which was just two-hundredths of a second in front of the host, Louis University.

Teaberry said she was glad to see the team getting points from so many different areas this weekend.

“So, we had a lot of the team [performing well] and that’s what a team’s all about,” Teaberry said. “Having multiple girls step up and grab points to help out the final team scoring.”