Winning back-to-back Southern Conference championships is no easy task. Just ask the Elon University men’s soccer team. But in her first two indoor track and field seasons with the Elon women’s track team, sophomore Louise Prevoteau has done just that in the pentathlon at the SoCon Indoor Championships on the way to helping Elon to a fourth place overall finish, which ties its best-ever finish at the event.
After taking last year’s championship by setting a school record with 3,566 points in the five events, Prevoteau outdid herself a year later in the 2013 championships Feb. 23-24. By taking home first place in the high jump, long jump and 800-meter events of the pentathlon, Prevoteau scored 3,711 points to set the new school record.
Taking a second straight pentathlon title wasn’t just points for the Phoenix in the overall standings, but a release for Prevoteau individually.
“I feel relieved to be honest,” Prevoteau said. “It was stressing me out knowing I had won last year as a freshman.”
Taking home the pentathlon crown for the second straight year calmed her stress after the meet, but what helped the sophomore calm her nerves throughout the course of the five events?
“Everyone was together and helping each other,” she said. “I started my hurdles at 10 a.m., and a bunch of our team was there, and there were three seniors from last year’s team cheering us on. I don’t think a lot of teams have that happen. We were one of the loudest crowds there.”
Though her main competition came from Samford University junior Ashley Cope, Elon head coach Mark Elliston knew it was going to be a special day for Prevoteau after just the first event.
“We knew she was going to have some trouble with [Cope], but right from the start, Louise went out and did great on the hurdles,” Elliston said. “She just kept it going after the hurdles.”
Prevoteau finished the opening event — the hurdles — in second place. That first event was what scared her most, as one misstep can knock a runner out of the competition before it’s really even begun.
“Anything can happen in the hurdles,” she said. “You can fall over a hurdle and get a zero and basically be out of the competition. That happens a lot. The first event is like a race and it’s very stressful where the others come smoothly.”
On day two of the competition, teammate and freshman Sydney Griffin took home a title of her own in the ever-troubling hurdles, this time in the 60-meter hurdles, with a time of 8.65 seconds.
“I feel very blessed,” Griffin said. “It definitely means a lot. I’m still just kind of really in shock because I don’t think I realize this is as big of a deal as it really is.”
With six runners on the all-freshman team, including Griffin for both the 60-meter hurdles and the 200-meter dash, in which she broke the school record but placed fourth overall, Elliston cited the difference it makes to have freshmen come in and succeed immediately like Elon’s have.
“When a recruiting class comes in and just really shows everyone that they’re for real and they want to come in and do their best, that’s always a really good thing to have,” he said. “The freshmen who are supposed to come in and just get a feel for stuff are actually coming in and taking charge of some things. It really pushes the veterans to pick up their level.”
The runners now transition to the outdoor season, beginning March 8 and 9 at the Coastal Carolina Invitational in Conway, S.C., knowing they had a good finish during the indoor portion of the season. But there are things they can work on to improve for the outdoor season.
“We are a very talented group and a lot of our girls are not 100 percent healthy,” Griffin said. “It’s amazing to think there could be even more to come. We learned a few things in this meet and during this indoor season that we can carry to the outdoor season.”
Elliston called the fourth place finish indoors a “bittersweet” moment because Elon has had many fourth place finishes but has never been able to crack the top three. But he said he also knows the potential his team has to be even better during the outdoor portion of the season.
“We did well, we equaled our best finish, yet we can look back and see that we left a whole lot of points on the table,” he said. “We can look back and see that if we had done better in this event or that event, we could have really moved up. We carry that into the outdoor season looking to add on with the outdoor events and move up from there.”