BATON ROUGE – Newly-crowned SEC Indoor 800-meter champion Morgan Schuetz was recently honored for her performance in the classroom by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association with a selection to its all-academic team for the 2015 cross country season as one of the premier runners in NCAA Division I.
Schuetz was honored after earning all-region honors with a 12th-place individual finish at the 2015 NCAA South Central Regional in November while maintaining a 3.66 cumulative grade-point average. It marks the third time in Schuetz’s collegiate career that she has earned USTFCCCA All-Academic honors as she has also twice been recognized in track and field in 2014 and 2015.
A Baton Rouge native and product of Parkview Baptist High School, Schuetz has developed into one of the NCAA’s leading 800-meter runners on the track while pursuing her degree in kinesiology.
She is a two-time NCAA Championship semifinalist in the 800 meters during both the indoor and outdoor seasons a year ago, and is poised to run for All-America honors to cap her junior season indoors in 2016 as she is the nation’s No. 11-ranked runner in the event heading into the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships in Birmingham next week.
Schuetz clocked her indoor personal best of 2 minutes, 4.05 seconds at Notre Dame’s Alex Wilson Invitational on Feb. 20 in her final race before the start of championship season. She was then crowned the SEC Indoor Champion in the women’s 800-meter final on Saturday when she raced to a winning time of 2:05.68 to win her first career SEC event title in her collegiate career.
Schuetz didn’t stop there as she later anchored the Lady Tigers to an All-SEC runner-up finish in the women’s distance medley relay with the second-fastest time in school history at 11:15.43. She secured both her third and fourth career All-SEC honors over the weekend to help lead the Lady Tigers to a second-place team finish at this year’s SEC Indoor Championships held Friday and Saturday in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
She will join a strong LSU contingent making the trip to the Birmingham Crossplex in Birmingham, Alabama, next week for the 2016 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships scheduled to run March 11-12.