DULUTH, Minn.: The UW-Superior women's track and field team won the 4x200-meter relay and posted three second-place finishes in individual events on the first day of the 2019 Upper Midwest Athletic Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships Friday.
 
As a team, The Yellowjackets are second overall with eight events scored with 73.5 points. Meet-host St. Scholastica is atop the standings with 106 points. Minnesota Morris (55), Bethany Lutheran (33), Northwestern 25.5 and Crown (six) make up the rest of the field.
 
The 4x2000 squad of junior LeAnn Torgerson (Two Harbors, Minn./Two Harbors), senior Valerie Rowe (Ironwood, Mich./A.D. Johnston), freshman Alexys Lewis (Hermantown, Minn./Hermantown) and junior Mikaela Shepard (Blaine, Minn./Blaine) recorded a season-best time of 1:49.66 to give Superior a men's-and-women's sweep of the event at the meet. The women outran St. Scholastica (1:56.56) by nearly seven seconds.
 
Sophomore Haruka Hamanaka (Izumisano, Japan/Kishiwada) finished second in the 5,000 meters in 19:54.66. Hamanaka set a new personal best in the process by less than half a second. Senior Ali Manthey (Zimmerman, Minn./Elk River) was fourth in the event in a time of 20:16.69. Junior Mathea Brink (Rochester, Minn./Century) ran 21:33.40, good for sixth place and three points.
 
Junior Maria Mazo (Hendaye, France/Irungo La Salle) finished second in the long jump with a leap of 5.06 meters. Mazo also scored in the high jump, tying for fourth place with a 1.38-meter leap and 4.5 points.
 
Sophomore Carson Haase (Brandon, S.D./Brandon Valley) earned a personal best with a second-place finish in the weight throw. She threw 15.18 meters, more than half a meter longer than her previous top mark.
 
Shepard, Torgerson and Rowe finished 3-4-5 in the 400-meter dash in times of 1:01.88, 1:03.12 and 1:03.36, respectively, for 15 points.
 
Senior Kelli Praska (Eagan, Minn./Eagan) earned 12 points on the day with third-place finishes in the mile run (5:19.34), and as part of the distance-medley relay with classmate Michaela Ruhman (Brule, Wis./Northwestern), sophomore Emma Street (Oak Grove, Minn./St. Francis) and freshman Nicole Koski (Park Falls, Wis./Chequamegon). The quartet ran a season-best of 13:40.62.
 
The meet concludes Saturday with events beginning at 11 a.m.