BATON ROUGE – LSU fans can help Lady Tiger sophomore Kimberlyn Duncan take home The Bowerman as the top collegiate track and field athlete of the 2011 season with online fan voting now open at the official website for the award at www.TheBowerman.org.
The results of the online fan voting will count for one full vote in the final balloting to both the men’s and women’s recipients of the most prestigious individual honor in collegiate track and field.
Online voting will be conducted at TheBowerman.org through Tuesday, Aug. 16. More than 20,000 votes were cast in online fan voting in 2009 and more than 27,000 selections were made in 2010.
Now in its third year, The Bowerman is collegiate track and field’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy and is presented annually by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association to the premier male and female athlete in the country following each collegiate season.
Balloting by The Bowerman Award Advisory Board, past winners, selected media personnel, statisticians and collegiate administrators is also underway until later this month. An independent accounting firm will collect, tabulate and certify final results and will keep the result secret until the envelopes are opened with the winners announced at the USTFCCCA convention on Wednesday, Dec. 14.
Duncan is a finalist for The Bowerman this season with her domination of the 200-meter dash and scoring more points at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships than any other athlete for the meet. While sweeping NCAA Indoor and NCAA Outdoor titles in the 200-meter dash, Duncan ran anchor for the Lady Tigers in winning a national title in the 4×100-meter relay and finished as the national runner up in the 100-meter dash to score 20.5 points at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
In the final of the 200-meter dash at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, Duncan made history by setting the low-altitude collegiate record in the event with her wind-legal personal best of 22.24 seconds.
Duncan now owns the low-altitude collegiate record with her time of 22.24. Wind-legal times of 22.04 by LSU’s Dawn Sowell in 1989 and 22.23 by USC’s Carol Rodriguez in 2006 on the NCAA’s all-time list in the 200-meter dash were run at altitude at the BYU Track Stadium in Provo, Utah.
Duncan is the sixth athlete in NCAA history to sweep both the NCAA Indoor and NCAA Outdoor crowns in the 200-meter dash, and the first Lady Tiger since Sowell during the 1989 season.
She has proven to be the nation’s most dominant 200-meter sprinter in recent memory as she has recorded three of the Top 10 times under all conditions in collegiate history in 2011. While her top wind-legal time of 22.24 ranks No. 7 on the all-time collegiate list in 200-meter races run under all conditions, Duncan ran the No. 3-ranked time with a windy 22.18 at the LSU Invitational on April 2 and the No. 9-ranked time in a wind-aided 22.27 in winning the SEC Outdoor title on May 15.
That gives Duncan the distinction of being the only 200-meter sprinter in NCAA history appearing on the NCAA’s all-time all conditions list in the event on more than one occasion.
Duncan also anchored the Lady Tigers to their 13th NCAA title all-time with the 4×100-meter relay as she joined senior Kenyanna Wilson, junior Semoy Hackett and junior Rebecca Alexander to record the eighth fastest time in NCAA history at 42.64 and defeat four-time defending champion Texas A&M.
Not only that, but Duncan nearly won a third NCAA event title at the NCAA Outdoor Championships for the weekend as she finished as the 2011 NCAA runner-up in the 100-meter dash after setting a new wind-legal personal best of 11.09 in an exciting national final. She finished just .01 seconds behind the national championship winning time of 11.08 by Candyce McGrone of Oklahoma.