SportsZone: Girls Track Racks Up the Wins

PC Indoor Track Unleashes a Season for the Record Books

While freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall were battering Delaware Valley residents this winter, a veritable heat wave materialized anytime the Penn Charter indoor girls track team competed.

On March 1, the Quakers’ season for the ages took them to State College for the Pennsylvania Track and Field Coaches Association Indoor State Championship, and, just as in 2025, the team was crowned state champions.

But there was also something different about this season from an already successful program—something inherently more unstoppable and dominant in the team’s pursuit of greatness. School records fell like dominos, while event rankings routinely hovered in the top three, five or 10 at the state and national levels.

Every possible star on a team full of them aligned for this group, and celebrating individual excellence was quickly swapped in favor of the fulfillment of enjoying one another’s many successes. 

“It’s been really fun,” said freshman Mackenzie Skelly, who broke the school record in both the one- and two-mile runs this season, finishing with the fastest times in Pennsylvania in both events. “Knowing that a bunch of people around me have similar goals, it just helps me. We push each other to be our best selves every single day, and it’s been really fun seeing everybody’s goals become reality.”

Skelly has been turning heads as a Penn Charter runner for some time now; in the winter of 2025, she set multiple national indoor records as a middle schooler in the mile and two-mile runs and has continued that excellence into her freshman year. She already has two Inter-Ac Most Valuable Runner awards under her belt on the cross country course, and her 4:49.50 mile-run at the PAISAA Championships in February was not only a PC record, but also the fastest time in meet history. At the VA Showcase in Virginia Beach in January, Skelly’s time of 10:20.57 in the two-mile run was the fifth-fastest in the country.

“A lot of my individual goals have become team-oriented, and I know that’s also true for a lot of the girls on the team,” Skelly said. “Every day we went to practice we moved forward in a positive way. It’s a really crazy feeling to be part of such an amazing team. I remember even as a Lower Schooler I looked up to the team and was so excited to join it. 

“It’s really fun now that I’m a part of it. Opening Instagram and seeing that one of my teammates broke a record, or hearing the audience cheer or chant someone’s name at a meet—it’s been a really fun opportunity to be part of.”

Skelly has plenty to cheer about as it pertains to her teammates. Before Skelly broke the one-mile run school record, teammate and PC junior Marlie Klein had broken the record herself a few weeks earlier, finishing the race in 4:50.04. At the 118th Millrose Games in New York City in late January, the 4x800 relay team of Skelly, Klein and seniors Abby Downin and Gwen Hamilton ran a time of 8:54.12, a Pennsylvania state record. And in the season’s third meet the first week of January, senior Michaela Poland’s time of 56.50 in the 400 broke a PC record and was the top time in Pennsylvania. 

“Marlie has been having a really good season, a real highlight of her junior year, a big recruiting year for her,” Skelly said. “Gwen Hamilton just committed to Penn State, and it’s been really fun watching her excel this season. Beatrice O’Connell is just a freshman but has been [setting personal records] in every single race—it’s really important to me to highlight the successes they have been having.”

After her record-setting 400 run in January, Poland was sidelined for a few weeks with an injury. But instead of pouting over a stall in her progress, Poland put the team first and herself second.

“Even though I was unable to run, being able to go to the meets, support the girls and see younger athletes step up to have these big performances has been really awesome,” Poland said. “It just proved that we have such a strong team with a lot of depth. Being able to help [my teammates], whether that’s helping them work on diving out of the blocks when they start or fixing their high jump approaches has been a really nice part of not being able to run or jump myself.”

The Quakers also excelled in various field events throughout the season. At the Tim Hickey Meet of Champions in mid-February, senior Zsuzsi Pollock broke the indoor school record in shot put with a throw of 34 feet, 5.75 inches; then two days later at the PAISAA Championships, Pollock broke her own record by tossing the shot put 35 feet, 4 inches.

“At the beginning of the season, I was amazed I could even hit 31 feet,” Pollock said. “So to end the season with four more feet is a really big accomplishment. I also do hurdles, and when I set a big (personal record) of 0.6 seconds faster, I knew that I was getting stronger and faster—I now know my abilities can go through a variety of events.”

In addition to Pollock’s success in the shot put, sophomore Keagan Seth established meet and school records in the high jump after recording a height of 5 feet, 4 inches at the PAISAA event. Other season highlights include junior Logan Llyod running a 25.90 in the 200, breaking a PAISAA meet record, while the distance medley relay team of Skelly, Hamilton, Klein and Llyod secured the top PA time and second-fastest time nationally with a time of 11:55.71 at the VA Showcase in January. 

“In the past, we’ve had four or five—maybe eight at the most—athletes that I had to enter in every single event just for us to compete,” head coach Candice Lee said. “We’d have people from other sports come who were really just training to keep in shape. This year everybody was locked in, enjoyed running and wanted to see improvement all while being coachable. They listened and were determined to do their best. 

“Everybody has a passion for excelling, and they want to beat each other’s records while celebrating one another when they do. The whole team has been very supportive of each other, which goes a long way for the culture of the team.”

Now that the Quakers have secured back-to-back state championships, the focus will mostly shift to continuing this dominance outside during the spring track season, although the team does still have a couple of indoor events remaining on the schedule, most notably the New Balance Indoor Nationals in Boston March 12-15. 

“We especially enjoy celebrating each other’s wins,” Pollock said. “It doesn’t feel like a competition against each other; rather, we just motivate each other to keep going.”

“With this team, we’ve had strong performances before (in previous seasons), but this year has just been a dominant season,” she added. “When I have success that I’m able to experience, it’s been really nice being able to share that with everybody else.”

— Ed Morrone OPC ‘04