The Lady Tigers relied on youth to return them amongst the NCAA’s elite in 2015 as they cracked the Top 10 by tying for ninth place at the NCAA Indoor Championships before ending the season with an 11th-place finish at the NCAA Outdoor Championships with their performance. In all, eight Lady Tigers turned in All-American performances over the course of the season while seven of those athletes reached All-America status for the first time in their collegiate careers.
All eight of those All-Americans make their return to the squad in 2016 as LSU will once again challenge for top honors at the SEC and NCAA Championships. Chanice Chase returns as the only senior All-American in the squad, while other All-Americans in juniors Nataliyah Friar, Rushell Harvey, Jada Martin and Rebekah Wales; and sophomores Mikiah Brisco, Daeshon Gordon and Aleia Hobbs hope to make 2016 a season to remember in Baton Rouge.
Sixth in a 10-part series previews the women’s sprints and relays that will provide the firepower for a championship run during the 2016 season.
Women’s Sprints & Relays
A youthful sprint squad stepped onto the track for the Lady Tigers for the first time during the 2015 season and led the team to a top-10 finish with a tie for ninth place at the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships and just outside the Top 10 with an 11th-place finish at the NCAA Outdoor Championships last June.
With returning All-American Jada Martin already in their ranks, the Lady Tigers welcomed in-state recruits Mikiah Brisco and Aleia Hobbs into the program to provide the squad with a foundation on which to build in the sprints and relays and power LSU’s program back into the NCAA’s elite once again last season.
Martin emerged as one of the NCAA’s leading 200-meter sprinters during her All-American sophomore season in 2015 when she became an NCAA finalist in the event for the first time in her career while taking home a finish of eighth place nationally at the NCAA Outdoor Championships held at Oregon’s Hayward Field last June. She qualified with a wind-legal personal best of 22.76 (+1.8) in the NCAA semifinals.
Now a junior from Lithonia, Georgia, Martin also qualified for the 200-meter dash at the NCAA Indoor Championships for the first time in her career where she placed ninth nationally as a sophomore last winter.
Just two months into her collegiate career, Brisco earned her first career All-America honor as a Lady Tiger when she raced to a fifth-place finish in the 60-meter final at the NCAA Indoor Championships as she followed a personal-best time of 7.23 in the semifinal round with a time of 7.25 in the final to finish among the NCAA’s elite sprinters during the 2015 indoor season.
A local product from Baton Rouge Magnet High School, Brisco followed with an outdoor season in which she sprinted to a wind-aided personal best of 11.24 and a wind-legal personal best of 11.31 en route to an NCAA semifinal appearance in the 100-meter dash. She finished in 11th place nationally in the semifinal round at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Hobbs took it a step further and earned a lane in the national final of the 100 meters in her NCAA Championships debut after racing to a wind-legal PR of 11.13 (+2.0) in the semifinal round to become one of the fastest freshmen to ever wear the purple and gold. Hobbs crossed the finish line in sixth place in her first NCAA final with a wind-aided time of 11.16 (+3.1) to score three points for the team in her NCAA debut.
LSU’s All-American trio of Martin, Brisco and Hobbs teamed with sophomore Rushell Harvey to form one of the nation’s fastest 4×100-meter relay teams throughout the 2015 outdoor season as they clocked a season’s best time of 42.80 in an All-SEC third-place finish at the SEC Championships. They followed with an All-American performance at the NCAA Championships where they placed fifth nationally in the sprint relay final.
Harvey, who hails from Houston, Texas, is a former NCAA semifinalist in the 100-meter dash in her own right as she boasts wind-legal PRs of 11.62 in the 100 meters and 23.67 in the 200 meters in her career. She placed 20th overall in the semifinal round of the 100 meters to cap her freshman season with the Lady Tigers in 2014.
The Lady Tigers are sure to compete as NCAA-title contenders in the 4×100-meter relay in 2016 as Martin and Harvey return for their junior seasons while Brisco and Hobbs will line up as sophomores this spring.
Martin even proved herself as a key member of LSU’s 4×400-meter relay team during the 2015 season when she ran the second leg for the team that claimed All-SEC honors as the SEC Outdoor Bronze Medalists a year ago. She joined with All-American hurdlers Chanice Chase and Daeshon Gordon and second-year standout Travia Jones as an all-conference performer in the mile relay.
The foursome then lined up together once again at the NCAA East Preliminary Rounds and raced to a seasonal-best time of 3 minutes, 30.74 seconds to place sixth overall in the quarterfinal round and advance easily to the national semifinals in the 4×400-meter relay. Chase looks to be the only senior in either relay pool in 2016 as the Lady Tigers return all four legs of their All-SEC foursome in the mile relay.
Two other Lady Tigers will look to bounce back from injury-plagued 2015 seasons to star individually and as part of the team’s relay pools this year as senior Kiersten Duncan and redshirt freshman Oksana Lawrence will return to action in 2016. Duncan has run personal bests of 11.72 and 23.52 in the short sprints in her time in Baton Rouge, while Lawrence owns a lifetime best of 53.61 in the 400-meter dash.
LSU’s sprint squad has also been strengthened by an outstanding recruiting class from 2015 that features the likes of Oregon transfer Christian Brennan (Waterdown, Ontario, Canada) and former high school standouts Kortnei Johnson (Italy, Texas) and Rachel Misher (Baton Rouge, Louisiana).
An NCAA Champion and All-American in her two seasons running on Oregon’s 4×400-meter relay team, Brennan looks to slot right into LSU’s relay rotation in her junior season as she joined the program with top times of 23.43 in the 200 meters and 52.12 in the 400 meters in her career. She was the third leg for Oregon’s NCAA Indoor Champion mile relay team in 2014 while helping the Ducks set a collegiate indoor record of 3:27.40 in the national final to eclipse Texas at the finish line and clinch the NCAA Indoor team title.
Johnson is a former seven-time state champion in Texas while running for Italy High School where she blistered the track with personal bests of 11.51 in the 100 meters and 23.94 in the 200 meters before signing with a deep and talented sprint squad at LSU. She also posted career-best wind-aided times of 11.26 and 23.39 in the state finals to sweep Texas Class 2A titles in both sprint races as a senior.
Misher is a former 10-time Class 2A Outdoor state champion and two-time Division II Indoor state champion in Louisiana while competing for Episcopal High School. She arrived on LSU’s campus with personal-best runs of 7.59 in the 60 meters, 11.73 in the 100 meters and 24.64 in the 200 meters during her high school career at nearby Episcopal.