VIRGINIA BEACH, VA – Madeline O'Connell won the National Championship in the pole vault, Ashley Heffernan scored First-Team All-America honors in the pentathlon and six Yellowjackets qualified for Saturday's finals on a tremendous first day for the University of Rochester women's track & field program at the 2023-24 NCAA Division III Indoor Track & Field National Championships at the Virginia Beach Sports Center.
 
O'Connell got the 'Jackets' day started with a National Championship, their second indoor championship in as many years, as the senior took home the title in the pole vault. O'Connell breezed through the first three heights on her first try, before needing a second try at 3.82m. She then landed 3.87m on her first try to move into the top four, before her 3.92m vault proved to be the difference, as none of the other three competitors still alive were able to surpass the final vault.
 
The senior's championship scored Rochester 10 team points, and the Yellowjackets sit in fourth out of 33 scoring teams through six of 17 events with 14 total points. Loras leads the pack with 25 points, while Johns Hopkins and MIT each have 16 points in a tie for second.
 
Heffernan would score Rochester's four other points on the day, earning First-Team All-America honors with her fifth-place result. Overall, Heffernan tallied 3,542 points, a new personal-best score in the five-event competition, turning in top-seven finishes in four out of five events.
 
The senior saved her best finish for last, winning the pentathlon 800 meters with a time of 2:18.60, a new PR, and nearly a half-second better than the second-place finisher. Heffernan began the pentathlon with a seventh-place result in the 60-meter hurdles, clocking in at 9.02s, and then finished sixth in the high jump, successfully making it over the 1.56m bar.
 
In the pentathlon shot put, Heffernan added another new PR with a 9.14m throw, good for 14th, while the senior added another top-10 result in the long jump, placing seventh with a 5.26m jump, just shy of another new personal best.
 
O'Connell kept things rolling in Friday's preliminaries, setting a new indoor PR and qualifying for Saturday's 400-meter final with a 55.90s run in the prelims, good for third and a spot in Saturday's final. O'Connell ran the fastest first 200 meters among all 20 competitors at 25.18 seconds and won the opening heat with her 55.90s time, the third-fastest in the prelims.
 
In the 800 meters, Megan Bell jumped up from her 13th-seeded time to break her own school record and earn a spot in Saturday's final, pacing behind WashU's Emma Kelley for much of the heat. Bell sat less than a second behind Kelley in the third heat after three laps before equaling the 2022-23 Indoor National Champion's split in the final 200 meters, clocking in at 2:10.17 to earn a spot in the final.
 
Bell's 2:10.17 time was good for third place and an automatic qualifier and improved upon Bell's school record by nearly two full seconds.
 
Rochester wrapped up the prelims with the 4x400-meter relay, coming into the relay as the top seed with O'Connell, Kate Isaac, Nora Chen and Bell running a 3:45.78 at Boston University earlier this winter. And despite falling back to fourth after two laps, the Yellowjackets qualified for Saturday's final with a 3:50.56 time, as Nora Chen and Bell helped UR come storming back and finish third in their heat.
 
O'Connell opened the 4x400 prelims with a 56.20 opening split before both Chen and Bell ran sub-58.0 second splits to help Rochester qualify for Saturday's final, with Bell's final 400 meters coming in at 56.03 seconds.
 
O'Connell will get day two of the 2023-24 NCAA Division III Indoor Championships started with the 400-meter finals at 4:25 p.m., with Bell and the 800-meter finals kicking off at 4:50 p.m. UR's 4x400-meter relay will then look to defend its indoor title in the 4x400, the second-to-last event of the championships, at 6:20 p.m.