PITTSFORD, NY – The opening day of the 2023 NCAA Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships, hosted by St. John Fisher University, saw the University of Rochester women's track & field team qualify for Saturday's 4x400 relay finals and Ashley Heffernan score two Top-10 finishes in the first four events of the heptathlon.
 
UR's 4x400 relay, the reigning indoor national champions, qualified for Saturday's 4x400 relay finals with a 3:47.43 time, good for third in their heat and fifth overall. Kate Isaac ran the opening lap of the relay for UR, with Megan Bell, Kristin Hardy and Susan Bansbach taking laps two, three and four, respectively.
 
Four events into the heptathlon, Heffernan sits in 11th with 2,773 points, 339 points shy of the leader, Cornell College's Natalie McAllister. Heffernan's best finish of the day's four events came in the 200m, where the junior finished second out of the field of 22 competitors with a time of 25.06.
 
Heffernan also scored another top-10 finish in the 100m hurdles, clocking in with a 14.87s, eighth-place finish to score 859 points.
 
Elsewhere on the day, Heffernan finished tied for 18th in the high jump, surpassing 1.49m, and 21st in the shot put with a throw of 8.36m.
 
In the Yellowjackets' other relay preliminary of the day, UR's 4x100 relay team of Isaac, Bansbach, Heffernan and Madeline O'Connell finished 11th overall and fifth in their heat with a time of 47.36, falling just short of qualifying for Saturday's finals.
 
Day two of the 2023 NCAA Division III Championships gets started at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, May 26, with UR's first event, the heptathlon long jump, set for 11:30 a.m.
 
Also on Friday, Bansbach, Bell and O'Connell will run in the 400m prelims at 5:45 p.m., and O'Connell will compete in the pole vault finals beginning at 6:00 p.m.