BATON ROUGE — Following a breakout performance at the IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan, this past summer, LSU’s Nickiesha Wilson is among seven nominees for the 2007 Jamaican Sportswoman of the Year to be announced Tuesday.
The award, which is sponsored by the RJR Group Sports Foundation in Jamaica, will be presented at its annual award’s banquet at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston on Tuesday.
Wilson represented her country at the World Championships for the first time in her career and burst onto the international scene by earning a fourth-place finish in the 400-meter hurdles. She was the only collegiate athlete to earn a spot in the final of the event on Aug. 30.
The Kingston native shattered the 20-year-old school record in the 400 hurdles with a time of 53.97 seconds in the semifinal round in Osaka, eclipsing the previous mark of 54.82 set by Lady Tiger great Schowanda Williams in 1987. Wilson also won a silver medal in the event at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
She helped lead the Lady Tigers to a pair of NCAA runner-up finishes in 2007 while earning a total of five All-America honors in her first season with the Lady Tiger track and field program.
Wilson was the NCAA runner-up in the 400 hurdles at the 2007 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Sacramento, Calif., while she also ran the leadoff leg on LSU’s national champion 4×400-meter relay team and finished third in the 100-meter hurdles at the NCAA meet.
During the indoor season, Wilson ran the second leg on the 4×400 relay team that took third place at the NCAA Indoor Championships and finished fifth nationally in the 60-meter hurdles.
She joins six other nominees for the 2007 RJR Group Sports Foundation Sportswoman of the Year award, including world 100-meter champion Veronica Campbell, squash champion Karen Anderson, Pan Am Games gold medalists Sherri-Ann Brooks and Delloreen Ennis-London, soccer star Tashana Vincent and World Championships bronze medalist Novelene Williams.