Smith picked up the first NEC weekly field award of the outdoor season and now claims the last honor the conference will hand out prior to its annual outdoor championship meet. Smith’s most-recent performance in the hammer throw allows the third-year Pioneers to head into the upcoming NEC Championships, which are set for May 7-8 at Monmouth, as a No. 1 seed. Smith, who took silver in the hammer at the 2010 NEC outdoor title meet, unleashed a seasonal-best throw of 55.87m (183’ 4”) to win the Yale Springtime Invitational. Her mark stands three inches better than the seasonal best that Monmouth’s Symmone Fisher, the defending NEC hammer champion, accounted for at the Lehigh Games last week. As a result, Smith is the NEC leader.