The Panthers finished in fourth place in the tightly contested Ohio Valley Conference Indoor Track & Field Championships in Lantz Fieldhouse this weekend.

Eastern recorded 117 team points, less than 23 points behind first place Tennessee State (139.50).

Tennessee State won the meet with a victory in the final event – the 4 x 400 meter relay. The Tigers team of Leslie Leary, Mercy Udoji, Rebekah Robinson and Crystal Ewell finished with a time of 3:47.55, over six seconds ahead of Southeast Missouri, who was favored to win the team championship coming into the meet.

SEMO finished in second place with 136 points.

“I’m really excited,” Tennessee State head coach Chandra Cheeseborough said. “It came down to the wire. I’m just happy to come out on top. I knew it was going to be close.”

Eastern took first place in three of the 16 events in the meet.

Eastern’s distance runners lived up to their reputation in the OVC. Senior Nicole Millici won the mile run with a time of 5:03.16 to defeat Semo’s Kaci Pilcher by nearly five seconds.

Millici also helped Eastern’s distance medley relay team take first place. Freshman Jaylee Carr and seniors Jennifer Cowan and Amanda Galvin composed the other members of the winning relay team, who set an OVC record (12:17.29). The previous record was set by Eastern in 2001 with a time of 12:18.99.

“Nicole (Millici) did a great job,” Eastern cross country coach John McInerney said. “It was just a huge weekend, great weekend for her.”

Eastern sophomore Angie Simone had a pair of second place finishes in the the 3,000-meter run and the 5,000-meter runs.

Junior Mary Wood gave Eastern its only other first place finish of the meet with an 11’4 1/2″ run in the pole volt.

In the remaining events, Eastern didn’t have an individual finish higher than third in an event.

Sophomore Alicia Harris ran the 400 meter dash in 56.71 for a third-place finish. Cowan finished behind Harris with a time of 58.46.

In the 800 meter run, Galvin finished in third at 2:15.82 and Millici took fifth with a time of 2:17.34.

Senior Tiffany Greenley finished third in the 20 pound weight throw with a distance of 52-feet-2 3/4-inches.

“I’m really, really proud at how our women competed,” Eastern head coach Mary Wallace said. “We couldn’t have done any better. I was just a matter of three teams that had a better day than we did.”

Wallace hopes Eastern’s young team will be able to build on this year’s results.

“I hope this will be a starting point for what we’re going to build for the future,” Wallace said. “It seemed we had someone battling it out for a championship in each event, we just didn’t have enough to get us over the hump.”