The track and field team sent two groups of athletes to two different events and came up with mixed results.

The distance runners competed at the Raleigh Relays at North Carolina State University.

At the event, one Huskie clinched her spot in the MAC Championships. Redshirt sophomore Meghan Heuer ran the 1500 in 4:31.79, which gave her a third-place finish out of 15 at Section III at North Carolina State. Heuer won the 1500 in NIU’s first outdoor meet of the season at the Bulls Invitational in Tampa, Fla., and now will be able to test her skill at the MAC championships in May.

Greg Hipp, assistant track and field coach, was leading the Huskie contingent in North Carolina and thinks Heuer can calm down now that her spot at the conference meet is clinched.

“I think it takes a little pressure off just to prepare for the MAC meet without having to have as much pressure on some of the meets,” Hipp said. “She’s done a lot of the same things as others, but certainly she’s just a little bit fitter, and her approach to the meets is a little less stressful than what some of the other girls do themselves. It helps her compete well.”

Saturday morning, NIU’s 4×1500 relay team closed the Raleigh meet on a high note when the foursome of freshman Hannah Savage, freshman Ali Olson, Heuer and junior Claire McAuley broke the school record in that event. They had a time of time of 19:33.00, breaking the old record of 20:37.22 from 2010. The record-breaking performance was good enough for an eighth-place finish out of 11 in the event.

NIU’s sprinters competed at the Texas Relays, which was hosted by the University of Texas in Austin. There, one Huskie also earned her way to Akron University and the MAC Championships in May. Senior sprinter/hurdler Megan Gregory finished third in the fifth heat of the 100 meter hurdles with her time of 14.02, which is good enough to earn a spot at the conference meet, despite the fact that Gregory finished 36th out of 81 in the event.

“It means a lot. I actually really wanted to qualify earlier in the season so I could already have that under my belt,“ Gregory said. “This season, since it’s my senior year, I kind of wanted to look further than that and kind of look at how to position for regionals and nationals. I feel like now I can better kind of execute and try to run a time that will get me into regionals as well.”

The Huskie 4×100 relay team of freshman Alicia Osley, junior Brittany Smith, senior Janay Mitchellkb all and Gregory finished fourth in heat four and 35th overall, with a time of 47.67.

Head coach Connie Teaberry said the fact that Gregory has already qualified should give her teammates something to shoot for.

“That’s very important. It gives her…confidence going into the next meet,” Teaberry said. “Being a MAC qualifier, now we can actually train through the next couple of weeks to prepare her for the MAC conference. It also helps the rest of the team as far as boosting their morale to try to do the same and get the MAC qualifying mark.”

Teaberry said they need to continue to adjust outdoors if the Huskies want to get better.

“We just have to get outside. We need to get outside to do a lot of the events that we are contesting, “ Teaberry said. “[In] the 4×100 we need to be able to get in that exchange zone and work those batons through the exchange zone. The 400 hurdles we can’t really practice those indoors, so we need to get outdoors so we can get our rhythm in those hurdles, discus, shot. All of those things are very crucial to being able to be outdoors.”