March 7 was a day for Maine in Brookings, South Dakota.
In a strange sports occurrence — more than 1,600 miles from the Maine border — six athletes from the Pine Tree State finished within the top 15 in the 3,000-meter race walk at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Indoor National Track & Field Championships at South Dakota State University. Of the six, five competed in the women’s race, led by Goshen College (Indiana) senior and North Yarmouth native Siana Emery, who finished in fourth place (15:02.96), which set a new personal record for her in the event by more than 30 seconds.
“I was really happy,” Emery said. “I had a really big (personal record) going into the meet. I felt good going into it and felt really good about my performance after. It was the first race in a really long time — running or walking — that I felt really happy with.”
Following right behind Emery in fifth place was Friends University (Kansas) junior and Lewiston graduate Kayla Allen (15:08.44). Allen’s teammate and Monmouth alum Moira Burgess finished 11th (16:39.74). Goshen’s Hayley Bickford, of Gorham, finished 14th (17:26.79), while Messalonskee graduate Elizabeth Larsen, of Concordia University (Minnesota) rounded out the group in 15th place (17:37.92). By finishing in the top eight, Emery and Allen achieved All-American status. For Emery, it’s the fourth time she has earned that status.
“I think we all just went in individually with our own goals and our own expectations that we thought were possible for us,” Allen said. “It was a really fast race and I think we all handled it really well.”
“It’s really awesome, because we all raced each other in high school,” Burgess said. “That we come back (in college) and we are all the same competitors and we all do amazing things, like (the group finishing in the) top 15 at the NAIA national meet, that’s absolutely insane.”
Aside from Emery and Bickford being teammates at Goshen and Allen and Burgess teammates at Friends, the group knows each other well, and spent some time before the race catching up with one another.
“We warmed up a little bit together, then cooled down a little bit after,” Emery said. “We all obviously had different plans for the rest of the day because we’re all from different teams. But it’s always nice at these events to kind of have a little reunion.”
“(Allen and I) got there a couple of days before the race,” Burgess said. “Siana and Hayley got there the day after we got there, so we kind of saw each other and did a shake-out together, where we all just talk on the infield (of the track). We didn’t see Liz until after the race, because (the crowd) is absolutely massive. But we hang out every single summer. We have progression pictures of us from our sophomore year up through this year in front of the L.L. Bean boot (in Freeport) together. It’s super cool that we all get to continue (racing in college) together.”
If there wasn’t connection enough with the group between home state and event, Burgess, Allen and Emery have all been trained in the past by Monmouth outdoor track coach Tom Menendez, who actually served as a judge at the NAIA nationals on March 7.
The race walk, as Menendez explained, is an event where technique is critical.
“(The race walk) is very technical,” Menendez said. “You have to be dedicated and you have to develop your technique prior to developing your speed. So many people want to do it where they want to be really, really fast, they forget their technique, and they get disqualified. To take race walkers out there, the first thing is to work on technique, make sure they’ve got a real nice technique, that they’re comfortable with what they’re doing. Then you add the speed onto that.”
The best overall performance of the six race walkers came on the men’s side. South Portland native Steven Smith, a junior at West Virginia Tech, finished second overall (12:16.25), also earning All-American status.
“I’m so happy to see so many of the Maine kids continuing race walking in college and being successful enough to qualify for the national championships,” Menendez said. “That’s a big deal when you consider they only take 14 or 15 (in the nation) per event. They take the cream of the crop.”
“It’s really cool that we can have such a big representation from our little state,” Emery said.
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