ST. JOSEPH, Minn. – Every time she races, Fiona Smith keeps finding new ways to make history, and this past weekend at the MIAC Indoor Championships was no different.
Smith won not one but two MIAC titles for the College of Saint Benedict track and field team, set one MIAC record and made history for the Bennies once again in the process. For her impressive weekend at the conference meet, Smith is this week’s CSB Athlete of the Week.
Smith started her conference championship weekend Friday with the 5,000-meter run. She made her first MIAC title of the weekend look easy as she finished 20 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher in 17:20.20. Her win Friday marked the second 5K champion in the past three MIAC Indoor Championships for the Bennies as Morgan Pierce won the event in 2019.
Her day didn’t end there, however. In the final race of the day Friday, Smith anchored the Bennies’ distance medley relay – and brought the team from seventh all the way into third. When Smith took the baton for the final leg of the relay – the mile – Saint Benedict was in seventh. In the next eight laps, Smith tracked down four of the six runners ahead of her and passed them all to put CSB into third to earn All-MIAC Honorable Mention honors – and score six valuable points for the team, which was in second after the first day of action in Northfield.
Saturday afternoon Smith did it again, winning her second MIAC title of the weekend and her third of the school year – and this one was more hotly contested. Smith finished first in the 3,000-meter run in 9:34.60 – less than two seconds ahead of Carleton’s Clara Mayfield, who took second in 9:36.39. That time not only marked a personal-best and a CSB record by three seconds, it is also the third-fastest time in Division III this season and shattered the 35-year-old MIAC record by 12 seconds.
Smith is the third athlete in CSB track and field history to win two MIAC titles at the same indoor championships, and the first since Allison Kosobud won the 800 and 1,000 in 2014. Smith is the second Bennie athlete to win the 3K and the 5K as she joins CSB Hall of Fame athlete and All-American Missy Petersen, who accomplished the feat in 1996.
Smith’s indoor season isn’t done quite yet as she will compete in both the 3K and 5K at the NCAA Indoor Championships March 10-12 in Winston-Salem, N.C.
