SOUTH HADLEY, Mass.—Five different competitors recorded their top performance of the season to help the Babson College women's track & field team get off to a strong start on day one of the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championships on Friday at Mount Holyoke College. 

The Beavers are currently in ninth place through five of 21 events with two points. Third-ranked MIT is in first place with 92 points, while Springfield (26.5) and Coast Guard are currently second and third, respectively. 

First-year Kate Henderson (Basking Ridge, N.J.) recorded Babson's first two points of the meet by recording a season-best mark of 109-feet, 5-inches to finish seventh in the javelin. Fellow rookie Brigid Kelly (Sandwich, Mass.) placed 15th with a mark of 103-feet, 9-inches in the hammer throw and junior Trista Sicard (Mansfield, Mass.) placed 17th with a season-best leap of 15-feet, 1.25-inches in the long jump. 

Junior Brooke Jankowski (Derry, N.H.), first-year Victoria Hart (Greenwich, Conn.) and junior Julia Pike (Mansfield, Mass.) all finished among the top seven in the 100-meter prelims to qualify for Saturday's finals. Jankowski was third with a time of 15.22, Hart came in fourth with a season-best time of 15.42 and Pike crossed the finish line with the top time of her career (15.91) to place seventh. 

Junior Robyn Wilkes (Atlanta, Ga.) also advanced to Saturday's finals by coming in sixth with a time of 12.57 in the 100-meter dash. 

Sophomore Maddie Stoltz (Somers, Conn.) is sitting in eighth place with 1336 points through four events in the heptathlon. She opened the day with a ninth-place showing in the 100-meter hurdles (21.52) and followed it up by tying for seventh with a season-best mark of 4-feet, 1.5-inches in the high jump. She also came in seventh with a season-best throw of 24-feet, 6.5-inches in the shot put and wrapped up the day by taking seventh in the 200 meters with a time of 31.02. 

Day two of the NEWMAC Championships gets underway at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.