The SIUC women’s track and field team came away from the Indiana University Invitational meet last weekend with a second place finish, but had the opportunity to win the Invite.

Indiana State University won the meet with a final score of 102. SIUC tallied 100 points, and host Indiana garnered 89 points, while nine area universities filled in the remaining positions.

Although the Salukis fell just short of victory, SIUC women’s coach Don DeNoon said his team should have won the meet.

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I think the relays were downers for us, DeNoon said. We should have won the meet by ten or 11 points. Just that one relay (4×400 meter relay) made it an 11 point turn-around. The lead-off leg got the baton knocked out of her hand and instead of finishing no worse than second, we ended up finishing eighth in that event.

I thought we had an overall good effort. We were in position to win the meet up to the last event.

Despite the team’s misfortunes, DeNoon said he was pleased with individual performers.

We had some really good performances, DeNoon said. I thought we had some kids that really still needed to have a lot more spark under them. We’re still a much better team than what we showed there.

Top performances brought in by SIUC athletes were from senior Joy Williamson, who finished first among collegiate athletes in the long jump stretching to a distance of 19-5 3/4. Williamson also finished second in the triple jump with a leap of 37-9 1/4.

Other top performances for the Salukis were sophomore Kelly French, who placed second in the mile run with a time of 5:06.7, and junior Lesley Batson, who finished second in the 55-meter run with a time of 7.19.

Senior Katrina Daniels placed second among collegiate contenders in the 400-meter run, crossing the line in 56.70.

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At this point in the season, DeNoon explained he is satisfied with the position of his team and is looking forward to the Missouri Valley Conference Championship meet on Feb. 23-24.

At this particular stage, I am pretty happy with where we are, DeNoon said. I don’t like getting beat, but the positive of it (getting beat by ISU) is we see Indiana State this weekend here and we will see them again in the conference championships, so hopefully we’ll come out two out of three.

Points (for the MVC meet) are going to be spread out more than I thought they would be. I think 120 or 125 points is going to win the conference, so we’ve got the ability to do that.