Two Track And Field Members Will Represent USA At NCAA National Championships
Kaitlyn Beans and Renaldo Frechou look to make Jaguar history for the Track and Field teams in their first seasons donning the Jaguar uniforms.
They will travel to Eugene, Oregon this week to compete in the NCAA Division I National Championships with an opportunity to become All-Americans.
Beans is the first individual in school history of the men’s or women’s program to qualify for the national finals in any of the four jumping events: triple jump, long jump, high jump or pole vault. She earned her berth by placing seventh in the women’s triple jump at the East Region Preliminary Championships recently. She is the first-ever Jaguar freshman to advance to the national event.
But to make the story more facinating, Beans never competed in the triple jump before joining the Jaguar team. She was a three-sport start at Brewbaker Technology High School in Montgomery, Alabama.
Her performance in postseason competition has been quite remarkable as she earned the gold medal in the Sun Belt Conference Championships with a jump of 13.19m and set a new school record by more than four-tenths of a meter and topped her personal best by more than seven-tenths of a meter.
Frechou, a sophomore from Paarl, South Africa, set all-time Jaguar records in the men’s hammer throw in his first meet of his Jaguar career at the Jaguar Opener in March. He became the first Jaguar to throw over the 60-meter mark. He would break his own record five more times over the course of the season by routinely improving his marks. He tossed a 64.36m at the regional preliminaries and never finished outside of the top five until the regional competition.
They look to join an elite club of five individuals who have earned All-American honors at South Alabama. David Kimani (2000), Tonny Okello (2006, ’07) and Vincent Rono (2006, ’07) for the men and Adjoke Odumosu (2007) and Lindsay Schwartz (2011, ’12) for the women’s team. If they finish among the top eight in their respective events then they could add their names to that list.
The competition will be held June 11-14 in Eugene, Oregon.