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Cardinals show no signs of first-meet jitters at MSU Invitational
MANKATO, Minn. Saturday's Minnesota State University-Mankato Invitational was the season-opener for the Saint Mary's University track and field teams but you wouldn't have known it by the Cardinals' performance.
There were no first-meet jitters, season-opening miscues or first-ever flops.
In there place were plenty of outstanding performances not to mention a handful of second record-setting efforts.
"This was a good starting point for us," said SMU coach Paul Thornton, noting that there were no team scores kept in the meet. "I was very pleased with our performances for a first meet, we performed very well."
Very well? How about outstanding.
Jenny Folgers (McHenry, Ill.) set a pair of school records, while Dwyne Smith (Burnsville, Minn.), Shawn Stewart (McHenry, Ill.) and Megan Mason (Rochester, Minn.) also got into the record book-rewriting act.
Folgers broke her own indoor mark in the 60 hurdles, clocking a time of 9.81, while adding a new school mark in the 500 an event she had never run, but still managed a time of 1:27.30.
Smith's school record came in the 200, where he broke the tape in 23.34, while Stewart bested the school record in the 500 (1:11.04) and Mason rewrote the pole vault mark with a leap of 2.76 meters.
"All in all, I was very pleased with the way we performed," said Thornton, whose team returns to action Saturday, when it hosts the first of two home meets. "We're looking forward (to Saturday's home invite) our athletes always seem to perform at a higher level when they compete in their own facility.
"Hopefully, that's the case again this year."
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