The track and field team had a record-breaking performance at the TSTCA Championships at West Mifflin Area High School on April 15.

The Black Hawks’ track stars ran through the competition, both literally and figuratively, on their way to surpassing multiple long-standing school records.

Junior Artemis Conaboy was the top finisher in the 400m at the competition with a time of 57.71 seconds, breaking her own school record of 58.15 seconds that she set at the Mt. Lebanon Invitational on April 1. The 400m school record had stood for 49 years!

Conaboy was frustrated with stagnating times during her sophomore season.

“I came in with a new mindset hoping to make myself better and not worry about who I was competing with,” she said.

Something about that mindset must have clicked because this is not her only record-shattering event this year either.

At a section meet at Mt. Lebanon on April 12, she set the school record in the 100m dash with a lightning-quick 12.48 seconds.

Conaboy credits her leap in quickness to her increased focus on track in the off-season.

“I think what helped the most was the rest I got while not playing club soccer. I took a break from it this year and focused on track. I think it helped me get a lot faster,” she said.

Only one more sprinting record remains for Conaboy to break, and that is the 200m record. She was close to beating it in the Mt. Lebanon meet where she ran a time of 25.84. The record set in 1977 by Toni Jackson is 25.74.

Fellow junior, Jenna Lang has not been shy to break records of her own, not just during this track season, but throughout the year in indoor track and field as well.

Most recently at West Mifflin, she broke the all-time meet record with a time of 2:17.06 seconds in the 800m. But as previously mentioned, this isn’t Lang’s first record-breaking effort this year.

She broke the 1600m indoor school record with a time of 5:01.88 at the Spire Invitational in Geneva, Oh. on Jan. 28, and after punching her ticket to the state championships, she finished 8th at Penn State University.

It doesn’t stop there for the team. In the 4x400m relay at the TSTCA Championships, senior Lauren Heh, Artemis Conaboy, Jenna Lang, and sophomore Sadie Orie finished with a school record-breaking time of 3:59.11 which qualifies them for the New Balance National Outdoor championships at the University of Pennsylvania later this year in June. The previous school record had stood since 1977.

Some other notable finishes at West Mifflin included a seventh-place finish in the 300m hurdles by Sadie Orie, a fifth-place finish in the pole vault by junior Julia Hoppe, an eighth-place finish by sophomore Ella Milliken in the discus, and a fourth-place finish by senior Jeremiah Hamilton in the triple jump.

Congratulations to all the Hawks who showed out at this event, and throughout the season!