BATON ROUGE – After wrapping up the 2011 regular season by leading the Tigers and Lady Tigers at the 117th Penn Relays Carnival this past weekend, LSU’s senior sprinter Gabriel Mvumvure and freshman hurdler Jasmin Stowers each received SEC Athlete of the Week honors on Tuesday afternoon.
The LSU Track & Field program has certainly earned its fair share of recognition with the release of SEC weekly awards in 2011 as the Tigers and Lady Tigers have combined for 16 SEC Athlete of the Week selections since the start of the indoor campaign in January.
Mvumvure has been named the SEC Male Runner of the Week for the first time in the 2011 season, while Stowers has received the SEC Female Freshman of the Week honor for a league-leading fourth time.
Mvumvure proved to be the star of the 117th Penn Relays for the No. 2-ranked Tigers as he captured three event championships at Franklin Field in Philadelphia to lead all athletes on the men’s side.
He anchored LSU’s 4×100-meter relay and 4×200-meter relay to a pair of Championship of America titles with two top-10 performances all-time at the Penn Relays before adding an individual championship in the men’s 100-meter dash in a span of about two and a half hours on Saturday afternoon.
In LSU’s first event on the track, Mvumvure anchored a dominating victory in the 4×100-meter relay with the Tigers running a 2011 seasonal best of 38.77 seconds. In a race that featured six of the top-10 ranked sprint relay teams in the NCAA, the Tigers finished more than one second ahead of No. 1 Texas A&M (44.36), No. 4 Florida (40.00), No. 6 Texas (DQ), No. 7 TCU (40.15) and No. 9 Mississippi State (40.38).
LSU’s winning time of 38.77 not only ranks No. 2 on the NCAA performance list for the 2011 season but it also ranks as the No. 2 performance in the 117-year history of the Penn Relays.
Mvumvure then returned to the track little over an hour later to anchor the Tigers to a victory n the 4×200-meter relay as the team defeated Texas A&M (1:20.72) in the event final with a winning time of 1 minute, 20.62 seconds that ranks as the No. 8 performance all-time at the Penn Relays.
If that weren’t enough, Mvumvure wrapped up his weekend with an easy win in the 100-meter dash as he clocked 10.33 in Saturday’s championship final to become just the second LSU Tiger in meet history to take home the Penn Relays 100-meter dash title. He finished well ahead of TCU’s Charles Simon (10.41).
With Mvumvure’s performance, LSU was the only men’s team during this week’s Penn Relays to capture more than one event title in three days of competition, including all relay and individual events.
Stowers has been impressive all season long as one of the nation’s premier young hurdle prospects, as she added the Penn Relays championship in the women’s 100-meter hurdles to her resume with her victory on Saturday afternoon against an NCAA Championships caliber field.
In her first career Penn Relays, Stowers clocked a wind-legal 13.16 in the final to finish ahead of the likes of meet runner-up and All-America hopeful Kierre Beckles of South Carolina (13.20). The field also featured such All-Americans as NCAA Indoor finalists Jackie Coward of Central Florida (13.63) and Gabby Mayo of Texas A&M (23.55). Stowers also finished ahead of the NCAA’s No. 6-ranked hurdler in the 2011 outdoor season in Natasha Ruddock of Texas A&M (13.23).
With her victory, Stowers became the seventh Lady Tiger in Penn Relays history to capture the title in the 100-meter hurdles and the first since former LSU national champion Nickiesha Wilson in 2008.
LSU’s SEC Track & Field Athletes of the Week
SEC Male Runner of the Week
Jan. 18 – Horatio Williams
April 12 – Barrett Nugent
May 3 – Gabriel Mvumvure
SEC Male Field Event Athlete of the Week
Jan. 18 – Zedric Thomas
Jan. 25 – Walter Henning
April 26 – Zedric Thomas
SEC Female Runner of the Week
Jan. 25 – Semoy Hackett
April 5 – Kimberlyn Duncan
April 12 – Semoy Hackett
April 26 – Kimberlyn Duncan
SEC Female Field Event Athlete of the Week
March 29 – Rachel Laurent
SEC Female Freshman of the Week
Feb. 8 – Jasmin Stowers
March 29 – Jasmin Stowers
April 12 – Jasmin Stowers
April 26 – Jen Clayton
May 3 – Jasmin Stowers