The St. Thomas women’s track and field team had an impressive day Wednesday, earning four victories as it hosted the Tommie Twilight meet at O’Shaughnessy Stadium.

“Everybody looks forward to this race, and it’s exciting because it’s at home” assistant coach Rich Maleniak said. “Just being on our home track, you know the competition’s coming to you, and there’s good competition across the board.”

Wednesday was the team’s first and only meet on its home track this season. The Tommies hosted athletes from the University of Minnesota, Martin Luther College, St. Olaf, Carleton, Hamline, Concordia-Moorhead, St. Ben’s and St. Catherine.

Senior Emily Gapinski secured one of the Tommies’ victories after running a season-best 2:10.76 in the 800-meter. Sophomore Hannah Helstad came in second to Gapinski, finishing with a time of 2:12:65 to moved into the event’s top 25 in Division III.

Gapinski currently holds the season’s top 800 time in the MIAC, as well as the top 1500 time in all of Division III.

The Tommies’ 4×100-meter relay team of junior Megan Maki, sophomore Brielle Bierman, first-year Katelyn Marciniak and sophomore Katie Murray finished first and ran its top time of the season in 49.23 seconds.

“Going in, we weren’t super concerned with our time; it was more about getting the handoffs down really well,” Marciniak said. “We’ve still got some things to work on, but we got our best time so far this year, so that’s good.”

Maki ran a season-best 12.59-second 100-meter dash and finished first in the event for the second meet in a row, following a first place finish in last weekend’s Macalaster Invite. Murray and Marciniak also placed in the top 5 for the 100-meter, finishing third and fourth respectively.

Despite being fairly new to the event, Murray also won the long jump with a 5.25 meter leap.

“I actually started long jump last week, so I didn’t really have many thoughts going in,” Murray said. “It went well though. I’m happy about today.”

Maleniak said the team has been moving some players around and trying different events to figure out where they’re best situated.

“Some did off events, some did primary events to kind of see where things are at,” Maleniak said. “We’ve got some versatile people, so tonight really clarified things like where maybe we should put people next week.”

One of those in a new spot was senior Aimee Junget, who finished a very close second-place in the 1500-meter with a time of 4:33.91. Maleniak was very impressed, noting that Junget’s time could earn her a slot at nationals.

“For her second time really running it, that’s a huge deal,” Maleniak said.

Olivia Graham’s 45.82m hammer throw marked the third-best score in the MIAC this season.

In other field events, Grace Bordson finished third in the high jump, and Elizabeth Russell finished third in triple jump.

Other top-5 finishes: Bierman finished third in the 100 hurdles, Marciniak finished fourth in the 200, Alex Fossum finished fifth in the 5000 and Summer Ellefson finished fourth in the 400 hurdles.

Several Tommies will compete this weekend at Carleton’s MIAC Heptathlon and Hamline’s Meet of the Unsaintly. Following that, the team will have the MIAC Championship on May 13 and 14 in Collegeville.

Joey Geske can be reached at gesk8583@stthomas.edu.