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Printer-Friendly ModeIndoor season ends at nationals
March 17, 2008 —
To say the career of senior track member Leighann Dowell has seen its share of adversity would be an understatement.
"To come back and be as successful as Leighann has takes many hours of dedication, not only to get back to being a participant of a sport, but to be able to live a normal life without injuries," coach Jim Nesbitt said.
Dowell, who still has a year of eligibility remaining due to being redshirted for a year because of injury, has faced more than her fair share of injuries over the years. A career that, as recently as last weekend, saw her place 14th at the national indoor meet has not come easily.
Before Dowell even began her track career at SVSU, she had her first of four knee operations due to an injury she sustained while playing basketball. Nesbitt said that while some athletes wouldn't want to go through the grueling demands of rehabilitation just to play a particular sport, that hasn't stopped Leighann.
"It takes a special person to be able to come back from all those knee operations and still perform at such a high level, a level most athletes never make it to," Nesbitt said. "Not only is she out there everyday at practice, a lot of the rehab hours she did on her own time, proving how bad she wanted to make it back to the team."
Not only does Dowell excel as an athlete, she performs well in the classroom also.
"Leighann does a good job of balancing her time with school and track. She understands that school always comes before track, no exceptions," Nesbitt said.
Indoor season recap
Going into the indoor season, both the men's and women's teams had similar goals: place as high as possible in the league, send as many individuals as possible to nationals, and set as many personal records as possible.
While the men did not have anyone qualify for the national meet, they did manage to finish slightly higher in the conference than the women, who finished sixth while the men finished fourth in the GLIAC.
Each team had a number of accomplishments during the indoor season, with several individuals achieving personal records. For the women, junior sprinter and middle distance runner Sjonne Mitchell ran the 60-meter dash in a school record time of 7.93 seconds.
For the men, senior distance runner Adam Roach ran the mile run in a meet record time of four minutes, 17.72 seconds.
For the upcoming outdoor season, which begins March 29 at the St. Josephs University Invitational in Rensselaer, Ind., Nesbitt hopes to see even more improvement from both teams.
"Hopefully we can get a few individuals from each team into the national meet and of course we always want to finish as high as we can in the conference."