Feb. 28, 2016
Final Results
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa - The Missouri State women's track and field team had a solid outing Sunday in the final day of the 2016 MVC Indoor Track and Field Championships, edging league power Southern Illinois by one point to finish in fifth place in the team standings.
Standing out for Missouri State on Sunday was sophomore Marissa Kurtimah, who clocked in a victorious time of 7.37 seconds in the 60-meter dash. She shattered the MSU school record for the third time this season with this time and tied a UNI Dome record with a winning time of 7.43 seconds in the preliminaries on Saturday. Teammates Shavonne Husbands (7.54 seconds) and Asha Cave (7.58 seconds) finished third and fifth, respectively, in the 60-meter finals, both with personal bests, to give the Bears a total of 20 team points in the event.
Less than an hour later, Kurtimah stepped onto the track with Husbands and Kadisha Francois in an attempt to collect more points and captured her second gold medal of the day with a win in the 200-meter dash. Her time of 24.30 seconds set the pace while Husbands clocked a time of 24.33 seconds to finish second and Francois finished sixth in 24.83 seconds. The trio tallied 21 points in the event.
MSU's efforts in those two events paced a strong team showing, scoring 82 total points as a team to finish in fifth place. Illinois State was the women's team champion with 121 points, followed by Wichita State (111), host UNI (86.8333), and Indiana State (83.1666). Rounding out the bottom tier of the standings was Southern Illinois (81), Bradley (45), Drake (38), and Loyola (15).
"It was a great day of competition," commented head coach Ronald Boyce. "We capped the weekend with not one but two new school records, with Georgia in the pole vault and Marissa in the 60-meter dash. The sprint group was brilliant, but more importantly, the team had an awesome final day of competition and results."
In the 400-meter dash, Oarabile Babolayi (56.83 seconds) and Shani Adams (56.90 seconds) finished sixth and seventh, respectively, to give MSU five additional points. Babolayi also finished fourth in the 60-meter hurdles to contribute five points to the team score after recording a season-best time of 8.56 seconds.
Wrapping up the running events and day two of the championships was the 4x400-meter relay. The quartet of Shani Adams, Oarabile Babolayi, Kadisha Francois, and Holly Pattie-Belleli collected eight points for MSU after finishing second in the event with a time of 3:45.54.
MSU school records weren't only broken on the track Sunday but also in the field. Pole vaulter Georgia Richardson cleared 3.41 meters for the first time this season, breaking the previous indoor school record of 3.35 meters. With Richardson's performance, she is now the indoor and outdoor MSU pole vault school record holder.
Three season-bests and one personal-best highlighted field events for the Bears behind Richardson's record on Sunday. Daijha Heron (12.03 meters) and Robiann Broomfield (12.00 meters) leapt to season-best marks to take fifth and seventh, respectively, in the triple jump. Betsy Borgsmiller cleared a season-best 1.70 meters in the high jump to tie her personal best mark that she recorded at the 2013 indoor championships. Throw Brittany McPike tossed a personal-best 11.22 meters in the shot put to close out the 2015-16 indoor season.
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