Army Has Strong Opening Day at Patriot League Championships

Army's men and women 4x800m relay teams pose for a picture with their gold medals at Patriot League Championships

Army Has Strong Opening Day at Patriot League Championships

May 15, 2026 | Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The Army West Point track and field team put together six podium finishes on the opening day of the Patriot League Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Annapolis.

After the opening day of competition, the women sit in first place with 56 points – one head of Boston University – while the men are in second with 38 points.

Charlotte Richman kicked things off with a personal-best time of 34:18.19 in the women's 10,000m to finish first. Louisa Diamond also earned a spot on the podium with a time of 34:37.90.

The next Black Knight podium came courtesy of Kiana Emerson, who finished second in the hammer throw with a throw of 56.83m. Jordan Hecht finished fourth at 54.33m, a personal best.

Joyce Philippe jumped a personal-best of 5.85m to pick up a very important third place finish for Army. The freshman finished just ahead of her teammate Olivia Reed, who was fourth with a mark of 5.82m.

The Black Knights capped off the day with a clean sweep of the 4x800m relays, as both the men's and women's quartets finished in first.

Parker Harris, Jack Musgrave, Ammon Smith and Kasen Jeitz finished in first place in the men's race with a time of 7:30.03. On the women's side, Sabrina Sardar, Grace Coppel, Mia Royall and Mikayla Cheney finished nearly two seconds ahead of second place at 8:44.66.

Action will continue Saturday with a number of field events, while the finals of track events kick off at 11:50 a.m. Fans can tune into ESPN+ to follow all the action.

Quotable – Director of Track and Field Mike Smith

Women's Performance
"We had a good day. We were mistake free, we qualified the people we expected to qualify and we won the events we needed to win. We are set up very well going into tomorrow. Going into the meet I thought that it would take 200 points to win it and there are three teams that can do that. We are one of those teams. We helped ourselves today and other teams had some slip ups that will hurt their chances. I see the meet coming down to the last couple of events and it being a three team race to 200 points (BU, Navy and Army). We can get there if we perform as expected and are mistake free. The points were not easy today and the qualifying was tough. Our sprinters did a nice job of getting through to tomorrow, our distance runners all qualified as expected, our throwers scored well and our jumpers outperformed expectations. The two events that we won were the women's 4x800 and the women's 10k. We have the best group of distance runners in the conference and they showed up today. Charlotte Richman '26 dominated the 10k this morning with the best race of her career. She was patient for 4miles and ran with the pack and then took command of the race and strung out the field of 14 women over the last 2 miles. She never seems to falter when it matters. Today was a good example of that. The 10k was far more demanding than in years past and she would have kept hammering the pace if I didn't insist on slowing her down to keep her fresh for the other races on her schedule this weekend. She has an engine that never quits and once she gets going she resents the idea of taking it easy. At least that is what it looked like to me because I had a hard time getting her to ease up. She just kept squeezing the pace until she had a 100 meter lead. Finally I got her to back it down and she cruised to the finish line unchallenged. "Honestly, I wasn't thinking too much. I was just trying to stay as relaxed as possible until it was time to take off. Then once I dropped a couple quicker laps, I backed off to a comfortable pace and triedto coast to the finish soi could be ready to go for the rest of the weekend." After a 3 hour rest she had to line up for the 1500 prelims and you would have thought that she would show some fatigue from the 10k but that didn't happen. The gun went off, the field started to settle into a slow pace which I think annoyed Charlotte, so she jumped up to the front and started hammering the pace. She refused to let anyone pass her and won the heat easily. The example she set this morning set the tone for the rest of our team. There were lots of examples of women doing their job today but there were also some surprises from women that have never been on this stage including two plebes. Elce Walsh '29 is the only pole vaulter that we entered in the meet. She wasn't predicted to score today but no one told her that and she would not have listened anyway. When it came down to the bar that would decide who would score a point and who would not, she cleared it on her 2nd attempt. That one make at 3.73 meters, got Elce 1 point. We don't know today how important that one point will be but it is more than we predicted we would get and we'll take it. We entered Joyce Phillippe '29 in the long jump this weekend because she jumped well at the ECAC meet back in April. That is really the only time she has put together a consistent series so we took a chance that she could repeat it this weekend. She did more than that today. Joyce jumped a wind legal 5.85 meters (19' 2.5") on her 5th attempt to claim 3rd place in the meet and move her to #7 on the Army all-time list in the event. There is scoring more than my prediction and then there is Joyce Philippe. I don't know how you go from 17' 11" in high school 1 time, to what she did today. But Coach Jordan Smith saw something in her and did a great all year in preparing her for what she did today. If we are going to get to 200 points this weekend we will need contributions from all corners of our team and Joyce and Elce did their part today. The other win for us today was in the women's 4x800. We came into the meet with the best time in the conference by a significant margin and we raced with that kind of command and confidence. Grace Coppel '29 got us the lead after the first exchange and Alma Lazo-Cazares '28 put the race away on the 2nd leg. Mikayla Cheney '27 ran alone on the third leg. " I felt super confident going into the race. We are extremely lucky with how many girls we have that we're able to put in that relay and still perform at the level expected. I had full confidence in Alma and Grace to put us in a good position going into the third leg and my goal was just getting Skye the biggest lead I could. The 4x800 is one of my favorite races because of the girls on it." Mikayla handed off to Skye Chambers'28 with a 50 meter lead. Skye took us home with that same 50 meter lead and we closed out our scoring for the day with our 3rd win in the last 4 years in the 4x800. "I felt very confident knowing that I was getting the baton from Mikayla. She always makes it easy for me. When I first got the baton, I had no doubt in my mind that we were going to win the race. I got out and then settled waiting for the signal to take off if I needed to." On the whole, it was a good day but we were not the only team that had a good day. We will need to perform again tomorrow to have a shot at the podium."

Men's Performance
"Our men had some strong performances today and on the whole did a nice job of competing and qualifying. A championship meet is almost always a mix of ups and downs and we had our share of both today. We had some mistakes but we came back and made up for those mistakes with some excellent qualifying in the sprints. In fact, our sprinters dominated today. Josh Duncan '27 had the best day of his career, and quite possibly the best day of any short sprinter in the history of our program. He started his day in the 100 meters with a winning time of 10.37 in the prelims. That time set a meet record and a new Academy record. Then he came back later in the day and had the fastest time of the day in the 200 meters at 20.84. We qualified 4 men to the final of the 200. In the 400 meters, Trey McGinnis '27 ran 47.02 to win his heat and top all qualifying for the finals and in the process setting a new Academy record in the 400. He bettered the mark set by Derrick Anderson in 1981. In the overall scheme of things, we topped the qualifying in the 100, 200, 400 and 800 meter races. The only final event that we won today was the 4x800m relay. It was a race that we knew we could win and the guys ran with that kind of command. Parker Harris '28 handed off near the front of the race at the first exchange and Jack Musgrave '28 took over from there. We had the lead at the 2nd exchange to Ammon Smith '27 and Ammon controlled the race for every step of his two laps. He handed off even with the Navy team at the final exchange and then Kasen Jeitz '26 went to work. Kasen is our school record holder in the 800 meters indoors and owns the 2nd fastest time in the conference this spring. We were confident that he would get us to the finish line first and that is what he did. It was a nice win for the guys and capped off a strong day overall for our team. We will have to be mistake free tomorrow if we want to have a podium finish."