University of Georgia
NCAA Outdoor Championships
Women Finish 3rd At NCAAs
June 11, 2016 | Track & Field
Petros Kyprianou, Keturah Orji, Mady Fagan, and Kendell Williams discuss Georgia's final day action at the NCAA Track and Field Championships.
June 11, 2016
Heptathlon Spreadsheet 
EUGENE, Ore. --- The Georgia women matched their best finale in history with a third-place finish at the NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships thanks in part to two national titles and a runner-up finish in Eugene, Ore., on Saturday.
The Lady Bulldogs scored 41 points to finish third in the team race behind Arkansas (72) and Oregon (62). This matched the Georgia women's finish at the 1995 NCAA Outdoor Championships and gives UGA three top-five finishes in a row at the meet. The UGA women also came within .3 points of equaling their top score of all-time.
The men's events wrapped up on Friday and the Bulldogs tied for 29th with eight points.
Senior Chanice Porter started the scoring for the Lady Bulldogs by capturing the NCAA long jump title on Thursday with a school record on the final attempt of her collegiate career.
Then, sophomore Keturah Orji won her second consecutive outdoor triple jump crown in historical fashion with a mark of 47 feet, 8 inches, junior Kendell Williams scored a career-best total (6,225) to win the second NCAA heptathlon title of her career (fifth NCAA title overall) and sophomore Mady Fagan made the best out of her first national outdoor meet with a runner-up finish in the high jump (6-0.75) on Saturday.
"If someone would have told me (on Friday) that we would pull this third-place finish off, I would have been laughing," said Bulldog head coach Petros Kyprianou. "Four girls showed up for us big-time, and a fifth was just out of scoring. Our scoring was kind of like gymnastics today with a 10, a 10, a 10 and eight and all of the sudden, we were up there. I am really proud of our whole crew.
"For Kendell to have five NCAA titles at this point in her career is crazy, and the way she won it made me very proud. Keturah again improved on her collegiate record that was about two feet shorter at the beginning of the year. I don't know what else to say about her performances. A meet like this doesn't come around very often and we are going to try and build for future from this one. One person who really made a difference was Mady with eight big points. She kind of came from nowhere after jumping 5-5 last year. I think she is next big thing in the NCAA in the high jump."
Orji (pronounced OR-g, like the letter `g'), a native of Mount Olive, N.J., sailed 47-8 with a wind-legal 1.2 meters/second on her fifth of six jumps in the triple jump. Four of Orji's six attempts would have clinched the title. Her best jump topped her own collegiate of 46-10.75 set at the NCAA East Prelims in late May. Her effort on Saturday also passed Nike's Tiombe Hurd's American record of 47-5 set in 2004.
Orji is now 8-0 through two collegiate outdoor seasons in the triple jump. She has won the last three NCAA titles after sweeping the indoor and outdoor championships this year and also capturing the collegiate championship at the 2015 meet in Eugene.
The win in the triple jump made Orji the team's top scorer after she also scored three points with a sixth-place finish in the long jump on Thursday.
Williams, a native of Marietta, Ga., equaled her finish at this meet when she was a true freshman in 2014 and surpassed her school record score of 6,223 tallied to finish second last year. Williams' heptathlon title is the third for Georgia in history and 18th overall outdoors since the team's first in 1987. This year, Williams used three personal records, including a collegiate record in the 60-meter hurdles on Friday, to power her national championship run.
Similar to her shot put on Friday, Williams started the heptathlon's fifth event, the long jump, with a foul. She then traveled 19-4.25 on her second try before improving to 20-1.50. This effort scored Williams 890 points and put her in second place by 216 points.
Williams lifted her opening try in the javelin a combined events personal-best distance of 132-3 to score 673 points. With her eighth-place finish in the event after her next two events were not improvements, Williams closed within 106 points of Jones.
Going into the seventh and final event, Williams needed to beat Jones by eight seconds or more in the 800m to clinch her championship. After Jones set the tone by taking a lead through the first lap, Williams moved into the front pack and finished fourth overall with a personal-best time of 2:17.89. This time bested Jones' finish by 22 seconds to clinch Williams' second title in three years and third finish in the top two.
An additional eight points for the Lady Bulldogs came from Fagan, who was competing at her first NCAA outdoor meet after taking 10th at the 2016 NCAA Indoor Championships. Fagan was the only competitor to pass at 5-8 and then had first attempt clearances at 5-10 and 5-11.50.
At the next height, Fagan was one of only two competitors to clear 6-0.75, hers coming on her third and final try. This solidified Fagan's second-place finish after Kansas State senior Kimberly Williamson had a 6-2 clearance to win.
Also in the triple jump, redshirt freshman Aliyah Johnson positioned herself as high as fifth during the competition with a top mark of 42-10.25. However, she was sitting eighth with nine advancing to the finals before the final two jumpers posted their best jumps of the competition and pushed Johnson to 10th.
Full results from the NCAA Championships will be posted at georgiadogs.com.
Updates from Georgia's track and field and cross country teams can always be found on Twitter/Instagram (UGATrack) and Snapchat (ugatrack).
Players Mentioned
