Yesterday I posted my men’s awards, today we go to the women’s awards. This was the Conference Championship weekend, and virtually everyone was competing and going all-out.

Let’s get to it!

Athlete of the Week Awards

Sprint/hurdle athlete of the week: Kimberlyn Duncan, LSU
Duncan swept the 60 and 200 meters at the SEC Championships, in 7.24 seconds and 22.54 seconds respectively. The time in the 200 meters is a world leader and makes her the 5th-fastest indoor sprinter in NCAA history.

Honorable mention goes to Brianna Rollins, who won the 60 meter hurdles and took second in the 200 meters at the ACC Championships. Her time in the 60 hurdles, 7.90 seconds, is tied for the fourth-fastest run in collegiate history.

Distance athlete of the week: Abbey D’Agostino, Dartmouth
D’Agostino won the mile and the 5000 meters at the Heptagonal (Ivy League) Championships with stunning ease, the mile by over eight seconds and the 5000 by more than nine seconds. Both were by far the best times of the conference championship weekend.

Honorable mention goes to Iowa State’s Betsy Saina, for her triple win (mile/3000/5000) at the Big 12 Championships.

Field event athlete of the week: Makeba Alcide, Arkansas
Alcide won the pentathlon at the SEC Championships with a collegiate-record total of 4569 points. She also placed fourth in the individual high jump, but would have tied for first had she been able to reproduce her pentathlon effort.

Honorable mention goes to Oklahoma’s Tia Brooks, who won the shot put at the Big 12 Championships by nearly three feet. Her winning distance, 60′ 9¼” (18.52m), hasn’t been bettered by a collegian in the last three years—except, of course, by Brooks herself.

Division II athlete of the week: Katie Nageotte, Ashland
Nageotte won the pole vault at the GLIAC Championships with a height of 14′ 2½” (4.33 meters), one of the best marks in D-II history and tied for fifth on the 2013 all-division college list.

Honorable mention goes to Barbara Szabo of Western State, who won the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference high jump with a height of 6′ 2¾” (1.90 meters), the best of the weekend across all divisions–even better than that of Brigetta Barrett, the Olympic silver medalist.

Division III athlete of the week: Melissa Norville, Illinois College
Norville won the long jump, triple jump and 60 meter hurdles at the Midwest Conference. Her winning distance in the long jump, 21′ ½” (6.41m), established a new D-III indoor record. In the triple jump, her distance of 41′ 7″ (12.67m) is #2 in D-III history, and her 8.61 in the hurdles ties her for #4 in D-III history.

Honorable mention goes to Mary Mahoney of Mount Union, who won the 60 meters, 200 meters and 400 meters (in D-III leading time) and anchored the winning 4×200 relay at the Ohio Athletic Conference championships.

CIS athlete of the week: Emma Nuttall, Trinity Western
Nuttall won the high jump at the Canada West Championships with a height of 1.85 metres (6′ ¾”), which broke a 28-year-old meet record and ties her for 12th best among all North American collegians.

Honorable mention goes to Laval’s Mélanie Blouin, who won the pole vault at the Quebec Student Sports Federation (Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec) Championships with a height of 4.25 metres (13′ 11¼”). While not her best height of the year, it would still rank her in the top ten among all North American collegians.

Team Awards

Team of the Week: Oregon Ducks
Oregon won the Mountain Pacific championship meet while significantly holding back. Star sprinter English Gardner ran just the 60 meters and skipped the 200. Star distance runner Jordan Hasay only ran as a pacemaker. There were other ways in which the Ducks left points on the table. Yet they won one of the deepest and toughest conferences by sixteen points.

Honorable mention goes to Arkansas, which pulled out a victory at the SEC on the final event.

Team Player: Shauna-Kay Creary, University of the District of Columbia
I’ll let Tom Lewis tell the story. From the USTFCCCA’s weekly awards:

Competing in the inaugural East Coast Conference Championship, Creary (Kingston, Jamaica) played a key role in ensuring District of Columbia came away winners of the team title. She individually scored 42 of the team’s 151 points in five events. She claimed the victory in the long jump on her final attempt (18-11/5.77m) while simultaneously competing in the high jump for the first time this season, which she won at 5-6 (1.68m). She then rushed from the high jump mat straight to the 60 trials and would secure her place in the 60 finals. Back to the pit she went, competing in the triple jump with tired legs, but pulling out all the stops to finish runner-up with a mark of 37-11¼ (11.56m). She had a short rest before heading back to the finals of the 60 where she finished third with a time of 7.85 seconds, narrowly missing the win with the runner-up running 7.84 and the winner running 7.83. Her whirlwind of a day ended in the 200 where she finished runner-up in a time of 25.86 seconds.

Fantastic Finish: The SEC Championships came down to the 4×400 relay, with Arkansas holding a slim 1-point lead going into that final event. The Razorback foursome responded in a big way, winning the event and the championship and running a world-leading time to boot.

Fantastic Finish, part 2: At the Big Ten Championships, Nebraska led Illinois by three points going into the 4×400 relay. The Illini were heavily favored in that event, as their anchor leg is the reigning 400 meter World Junior Champion, but the Huskers could still win the title if they finished second or third. They ended up fifth, and Illinois took home the trophy.

All she does is win: As pointed out by the Indianapolis Star’s David Woods, Illinois head coach Tonja Buford-Bailey has won Big Ten championships as an athlete, both as an individual and part of a champion team, and has coached a champion team. He’s not sure if anyone else in Big Ten history has pulled off this triple crown. But I suppose she was going to learn about winning since her high school’s home track is located on Edwin C. Moses Boulevard.

Canadians in America: At the Mid-American Conference Championships, Eastern Michigan freshman Alysha Newman broke the Canadian indoor junior pole vault record with a 4.23 metre (13′ 10½”) clearance. And who held the old record? Ariane Beamont-Courteau…who competes for Akron and took second place behind Newman. Another Canadian junior pole vault record holder was at that meet, as Akron’s Shawn Barber won the men’s competition.

The Week’s Top Marks