Kotula walked away from her first-ever collegiate outdoor competition with a first-place finish. The first-year Colonial threw the javelin 45.77m (150’ 2”) to win the Wake Forest Open (Mar. 18). Topping Buffalo’s Kathryn Weston to win the competition by 15 centimeters, Kotula catapulted herself to the early NEC lead. Her mark in more than 4.0 meters better than the qualifying distance for the 2011 ECAC Championships.