Record Holders Raise the Bar for Women's Track & Field

  As the outdoor track season heats up, the women's track and field team takes a break this weekend before facing a few of their biggest challenges of the spring. The Owls have seen underclassmen and veterans raise the bar and break school records in the indoor campaign and have continued to produce impressive results in their outdoor schedule. Under the leadership of a seasoned coach with Olympic experience, Elvis Forde, the team has built accelerated the program with talented runners in every distance.

                  The winter campaign saw two records fall at the Villanova Invitational on February 6th. Freshman Sylvia Wilson set a new mark in the 60-meter dash (7.59) and 60-meter hurdles in one night. At the David Hemery Valentine Invitational the following weekend, junior Bionca St. Fleur bested her own mark in the 200-meters to 24.23 seconds. St. Fleur would later break the 29-year old school record in the long jump when she landed 6.01 meters (19'8 ¾") at the American Athletic Conference Indoor Championships. She became the first Owl to eclipse 6 meters in the event. Wilson would set a new mark in the prelims of the 60-meter hurdles at 8.29 before winning the conference title the next day.

                  The new record in the 200-meters was especially sweet for St. Fleur, who grew up in Boston. Cold New England winters has made her more comfortable on the indoor track. Even now, she is one of the few Owls who prefers indoor over outdoor running. "Everyone on the team kind of makes fun of me for it because I'm from New England and I don't like running outside because it's cold. They'll say 'You're from New England, you should like the cold' but no. I'm used to running indoor and there's something about the double-curve [two turns] in the 200, the smaller setting. There's also no different factors. Outdoors you have different factors like climate, it could be raining one day or windy. You have different factors that can mess up your run, not in indoor. It's the same for every single competitor."

                  One of the Owls who does prefer to run outdoors is graduate student Blanca Fernandez. She holds five school records on the track (800, 1,500, mile, 3,000, and 5,000), all earned last season. While injuries kept her out of competition for the winter, she looks forward to an exciting outdoor track season. She also has her eye on qualifying for the Rio Olympics for her native country, Spain. She has been working with Coach James Snyder, who heads the cross country program. He also helped bring her to Temple. "I sent an email to several universities, asking about their business program. Some of them answered, some of them didn't. Temple's offer was the best. Temple's business program was ranked #1 in the nation. Coach Snyder also did really well recruiting me."

                  Being able to excel at a variety of distances is no easy feat. Fernandez has been able to become a stronger runner through training and placing laser focus on each discipline. "You don't prepare for that variety. You run everything as part on your workout but you focus on one event. Last year, I focused on the 1,500 and I was running a lot of 800s too. It's very similar. This time, with the 5k, I don't think I will run too many 800s. You can do them to build up your speed but you focus on the event you train for."

                  Temple has struggled previously in the conference championships but managed a program-best finish this indoor season, placing eighth at the conference championships. St. Fleur credits Coach Forde with her improvement. "Coach Forde brings a certain energy and excitement for the sport. He as a coach pushing me and wanting better for the team, to build the reputation for track and field, which pushed me to go hard this preseason and really get after it."

                  Coach Forde grew up in Barbados, ran collegiate track in the United States, and even represented his homeland in the 1984 and '88 Summer Games. He joined Temple after 25 years split between Murray State and Illinois State. He takes a more oversight approach in his role, leaning on his assistant coaches while focusing on the mental as well as the physical grind of the sport. "You can't perform if you have self-doubts of your own efforts and capabilities. There's nothing fancy about it. Once the kids are excited about what they're doing and you're having a good time yourself and making them feel good about the whole experience, that's a key in terms of a lot of success we've had." He also notes the freshman have found success and inspired their teammates to work harder as well.

                  Coming up later this month is the Penn Relays, one of the biggest annual events in track. Thousands of fan fill Franklin Field for the weekend that features everything from middle schoolers to elite athletes preparing for the Olympics. Fernandez got a better understanding for the herculean effort it takes to put on the three-day event. "For one of my projects in class, I went to the director of the Penn Relays and said 'I need to talk to you because this is the biggest event I've ever run.' We have nothing similar to that [in Spain]. Something similar would be the European Championships. It's awesome how they do it, how many people they are able to bring here. They were talking to me about what they do. They work on this every single day, every year."

                  Performing on the biggest stages is something Coach Forde has done and knows the feeling from two Olympic Games. While he credits Coach Snyder with preparing Fernandez for the Olympics, he does offer support on the mental aspect. He knows the feeling of competing before massive crowds, as he did in 1984 at the Los Angeles Coliseum. "It's funny when you're an athlete sometimes, you only realize the crowds when you're done. Before your competition, you get tunnel vision and sometimes you don't recognize the magnitude of the spectatorship. You're so in tuned with your preparation and ability to perform, you don't always recognize it."

The Owls return to their outdoor tenure next weekend at the Princeton Quad. The one-day competition will take place on Saturday, April 16.

Temple University Athletics

Record Holders Raise the Bar for Women's Track & Field

Players Mentioned

Blanca Fernandez

Bionca St. Fleur

Sylvia Wilson

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