Franklin, Kouba Headline Women's Track's Qualifying Quartet for 2016 Olympic Trials

This past weekend, the Harvard women’s track and field team sent competitors across the country to race in three separate meets. Though the meet locations varied from California to Florida to Texas, one characteristic remained the same across the board—Crimson success.

When all was said and done, Harvard came away with four Olympic Trial qualifying athletes across five different events. Seniors Paige Kouba and Autumne Franklin, sophomore Courtney Smith, and freshman Gabby Thomas all came away from the weekend with times that put them in the running for a bid to represent the United States this August in Rio de Janeiro, although qualifying for Trials is just the first step in a long process.

“I was obviously very happy, but not jumping off the walls or anything, because—not in a cocky way—but it’s kind of just one box to check off,” Franklin said. “I still plan to hit the A standard, which means I can actually go to the Olympics and compete, and I’m also still hoping to run a lot faster.”

Franklin’s stab at the Olympic podium comes in the 400 hurdles event, as the senior co-captain came in second at the Florida Relays this past weekend with a time of 56.81, good enough to pass the mark for USA’s Track and Field Olympic Trials, to be held this upcoming July in Eugene, Ore.

Classmate and co-captain Kouba is familiar with the setting of the Olympic Trials, as the Eugene native has volunteered at the past two renditions of the meet.

“I’ve gone the last two Trials as a volunteer on the basket crew, carrying gear for the athletes, so I was on the track, but in a little bit of a different capacity,” Kouba said. “It’s a lifelong dream of mine…. [Franklin] and I talked over spring break about how this is our last season with Harvard, and I think we both really appreciate how special that is, and we want to make the most of it.”

Kouba will be representing Harvard in the steeplechase, having set a Crimson record on Saturday at the Stanford Invitational. Her 9:50.21 for a 3,000 meter run is also the second best time in Ivy League history, coming in just shy of three seconds under the automatic qualification time.

On the other end of the spectrum, the youngest Olympic Trials qualifier for the Crimson is Thomas, who had already qualified for Trials at the Raleigh Relay in North Carolina on March 28. Her 23.18 in the 200 meter dash not only propelled her to Eugene, but also beat the then-best NCAA time.

This past weekend, Thomas qualified for her second event—the 100 meter dash. Finishing the race in 11.30 seconds, Thomas shattered the program record by almost three tenths of a second. She then went on to break her own 200 time, shaving off 0.43 seconds from her time the previous weekend to bring it down to 22.75. She is currently ranked 10th in the nation for the 100 and second in the 200, 0.05 seconds behind Arkansas’s Taylor Ellis-Watson.

“After the race, I went over to my coach, and he told me...the good news [that] I made the Olympic Trials,” Thomas said after her race March 28. “I was so excited...really pumped. I immediately just called my mom.”

Rounding out the quad of Olympic Trial qualifiers, Smith is a second-year distance runner whose time of 32:08.32 in the 10K at the Stanford Invitational brought her the eighth-best time in the nation and also put her almost 20 seconds ahead of the cutoff for trials.

For Smith, the high-standing results came earlier than previously expected, as she had her eyes set on the 2020 Games and did not expect to qualify for the Trials in Rio.

“I hadn’t really thought about expectations for the Trials yet, actually, but I guess just going in there and getting good experience [will be good] since hopefully this isn’t the last Trials for me. My goal would be making the 2020 Olympics,” Smith said. “It’s a cool place, and you never know what’s going to happen…. If someone catches a bad day. I’m just going to go for it and not be intimidated.”

With a spread of youth and leadership among the qualifiers, each athlete will have a support system going into July’s Trials, which should push each competitor to their full potential while providing them with an understanding of the training process.

There are also hopes that the success of the four will instill an expectation in Cambridge to stride farther as the track and field program continues to grow and improve in coming years.

“It feels good to know that with me being a leader on the team, we’re doing probably the best that we’ve ever done since I’ve been here,” Frankin said. “I just hope that us doing well and having the leaders on the team—me and Paige—inspires people and motivates people. I would hope that we’re fostering a culture of greatness and striving towards greatness and helping to inspire good lifestyle habits and ambition towards excellence.”

—Staff writer Ariel Smolik-Valles can be reached at ariel.smolikvalles@thecrimson.com.