During the past week, the Penn State women's indoor track and field team found itself running on high gear, participating in a frenzy of meets in an attempt to bolster its shot at a strong performance at the national level.

Two events held a week ago, the Last Chance Invitational at Iowa State and the East Coast Athletic Conference (ECAC) Championship in Boston, afforded the Nittany Lions a chance to qualify as many athletes as possible for the NCAA Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships, held Friday and Saturday at the University of Arkansas.

At Iowa State, the 4x400-meter relay team of freshmen Gayle Hunter, Shana Cox and Dominique Blake, and sophomore Kamilah Salaam failed to earn an NCAA qualifying mark. However, Penn State fared much better at the ECAC meet, where Kate Johnston put on an impressive show, throwing for a personal best of 66 feet, 3 inches in the 20-pound weight throw, good enough for an NCAA appearance.

Johnston said that after a rough couple of years, it was satisfying to see positive results from all her hard work.

"It feels great," she said. "It feels good to actually see some benefits from throwing the weight. I enjoyed it a lot more than I ever have."

After the ECAC and the Last Chance Invitational were complete, Penn State qualified four athletes for this weekend's NCAA meet: Johnston in the weight throw, junior Jennifer Leatherman in the weight throw and shot put, Cox in the 200 and 400, and Hunter in the pentathlon.

While perennial power Tennessee cruised its way to an NCAA title, Penn State failed to better last year's place of 14th, finishing in a four-way tie for 39th with Alabama, Yale and Rutgers.

The Lions managed just five team points, all from Leatherman, who earned All-America honors for her ninth-place finish in the shot put (51-4.25) and her fourth-place finish in the weight throw (69-3.75).

"Jen Leatherman had a great weekend," Penn State coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said. "She continued to cap off a tremendous campaign this year."

Although Alford-Sullivan was pleased with Leatherman's results, she acknowledged that it would have taken a better team effort to place higher at the NCAA meet.

"We only had one person score this year. That's the bottom line," Alford-Sullivan said. "We had a nice representation, but you can't have a team score off of one athlete."

While Leatherman demonstrated her throwing prowess, the freshman duo of Cox and Hunter finally showed some signs that it is indeed a pair of freshmen, with both athletes finishing off their usual marks in their respective events. Cox finished a disappointing 11th in the 400 (53.61 seconds) and 15th in the 200 (23.88). In the pentathlon, Hunter, who going into the meet was ranked fourth in the nation in the event, had a subpar performance, finishing 14th and scoring 3,889 points.

"Both Gayle Hunter and Shana Cox had kind of a freshman weekend," Alford-Sullivan said. "You have to live and learn a little bit."

Johnston, appearing in her first indoor championship, finished 16th in the weight throw with a toss of 64-3.25.

Even though it was a down weekend for Penn State, it surely provided a memorable experience for the members of the team, who sacrificed their spring break to compete for the Blue and White.

"I was just happy to be there. Being at the meet was great," Johnston said. "I just took that experience, and I'm going to cherish it."