BATON ROUGE, La. – For the first time in his young collegiate career, Godson Oghenebrume was named the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association National Athlete of the Week on Tuesday morning. The sophomore clocked his first ever sub-10 100-meter dash and helped set the nation-leading 4×100-meter relay time once again.
Oghenebrume, a native of Ughelli, Nigeria, is enjoying his second outdoor season with the Tigers this year. The 19-year-old star went into LSU Alumni Gold with an all-conditions personal-best time of 10.12 seconds (+0.9 m/s) from last year’s Tom Jones Memorial. Entering this past week he has only ran one previous 100 this year, clocking in at 10.13 seconds (+1.5 m/s) at the Lloyd Wills Invitational. In just his second 100-meter race of the season, Godson blazed his way to a slightly wind-aided time of 9.97 seconds (+2.3 m/s) on Saturday.
The time of 9.97 is the second-fastest time in the nation this year, and is the fastest all-conditions time among Nigerians and third fastest for the continent of Africa. The time pushed him to a first-place finish against a loaded field that included multiple Olympians and World Championship quality runners. His heat in particular had Olympian Marvin Bracy-Williams, Olympian Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, and World Championship caliber runner Abdul Hakim Sani Brown.
Corrected down to a legal wind, Oghenebrume’s time of 9.97 seconds at +2.0 m/s wind would’ve been around 9.98 seconds.
He is also the anchor for the nation’s fastest 4×100-meter relay team. LSU’s 4×100 team consisting of Brandon Hicklin, Dorian Camel, Da’Marcus Fleming, and Oghenebrume won their event this past weekend with a time of 38.36 seconds. In their heat was the Canadian Olympian team, which is the only team in the world to clock a sub-38 second time in the relay this year.
The time of 38.36 puts them at fourth on the all-time LSU performance list. The Tigers have now held the nation-leading time every week this season and have clocked seven times on the nation’s top-10 performance list for 2023. Florida and Tennessee are the only other team with multiple coming in at two each. The time of 38.36 ranks fourth in the world currently as they now sit with two times in the world’s top-10 performance list this season.
This is the first time an LSU athlete has earned a National Athlete of the Week honor this outdoor season. The last to earn this honor was fellow Nigerian Favour Ofili after setting the collegiate 200-meter record at Tom Jones Memorial on April 19, 2022.
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