BATON ROUGE – The next stop on the Road To Rio for members of the LSU Track & Field program is Kingston, Jamaica, as 10 current and former athletes are set to compete for a spot on Jamaica’s Olympic Team at the 2016 Jamaican Senior Championships beginning Thursday and running through Sunday at the National Stadium.
Thursday’s action gets underway in the qualifying rounds of the 400-meter hurdles at 6:05 p.m. CT, while events continue Friday at 5:45 p.m., Saturday at 9 a.m. and Sunday at 5:40 p.m. at the championship.
Former NCAA Champions and All-Americans Damar Forbes, Samantha Henry-Robinson, Riker Hylton, Isa Phillips and Nickiesha Wilson are all looking to make their return to the Olympic stage for Jamaica, while 2016 All-Americans Fitzroy Dunkley and Renard Howell and former LSU stars Jonique Day, Natoya Goule and Nikita Tracey hope to qualify for the first time. These 10 athletes combined to win 12 NCAA event titles, 16 SEC event titles and a total of 56 All-America honors during their respective careers in Baton Rouge.
Henry-Robinson, a 15-time All-American as a Lady Tiger, is a reigning Olympic Silver Medalist after running on Jamaica’s 4×100-meter relay team during her Olympics debut in London four years ago. Wilson is eyeing her third-straight Olympics after competing in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012, while Phillips represented his country in 2008 and Forbes and Hylton both competed as collegians in 2012.
Dunkley and Howell proved to be among the NCAA’s best in their respective events during the 2016 collegiate season as both were crowned NCAA relay champions as well as All-Americans in their individual events.
Dunkley, who arrived in Baton Rouge as a high jump and triple jump recruit four years ago in 2013, ended his career as the NCAA Outdoor Silver Medalist in the 400-meter dash after clocking a personal best of 45.06 for second place in the national final at Oregon’s Hayward Field back on June 10. He lines up at the National Stadium this weekend as the No. 2-ranked Jamaican in the event to this point of the 2016 season.
Dunkley’s senior season has also been highlighted by anchoring the Tigers to a sweep of NCAA Indoor and NCAA Outdoor titles in the 4×400-meter relays along with an SEC Outdoor Championships meet record time of 3 minutes, 0.48 seconds in winning the conference title. Dunkley has already represented Jamaica internationally this season at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in March.
Howell ran the second leg on LSU’s SEC Champion and NCAA Champion 4×100-meter relay throughout the 2016 season while teaming with Jaron Flournoy, Tremayne Acy and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake in record-setting performances in both finals. They first set an SEC Outdoor Championships meet record of 38.33 for the eighth-fastest time in collegiate history before running a Hayward Field record of 38.42 in the national final.
Howell recovered from a hamstring injury that forced him to miss the entire indoor season to earn All-America honors outdoors as the NCAA’s fourth-place finisher in the 200-meter dash at the NCAA Outdoor meet. It is a junior season in which he was also crowned the SEC Outdoor Silver Medalist with a wind-legal personal best of 20.15 in the final.
Below is the complete entry list and competition schedule of LSU’s athletes competing at the Jamaican Senior Championships this weekend. Times listed are Central and subject to change based on weather delays and athlete advancement.
LSU’s Entries at the 2016 Jamaican Senior Championships
Note: All times Central and subject to change.
Thursday, June 30
6:05 p.m. – Women’s 400 Hurdles First Round (Nikita Tracey)
6:20 p.m. – Men’s 400 Hurdles First Round (Isa Phillips)
6:40 p.m. – Women’s 100 Meters First Round (Samantha Henry-Robinson)
Friday, July 1
5:45 p.m. – Women’s 400 Meters First Round (Jonique Day)
6 p.m. – Men’s 400 Meters First Round (Fitzroy Dunkley, Riker Hylton)
7 p.m. – Women’s 100 Meters Semifinals (Samantha Henry-Robinson)
8:10 p.m. – Women’s 400 Hurdles Final (Nikita Tracey)
8:20 p.m. – Men’s 400 Hurdles Final (Isa Phillips)
9 p.m. – Women’s 100 Meters Final (Samantha Henry-Robinson)
Saturday, July 2
9 a.m. – Men’s 200 Meters First Round (Renard Howell)
5:10 p.m. – Men’s Long Jump Final (Damar Forbes)
6:50 p.m. – Women’s 400 Meters Semifinals (Jonique Day)
7 p.m. – Men’s 400 Meters Semifinals (Fitzroy Dunkley, Riker Hylton)
7:25 p.m. – Women’s 800 Meters Final (Natoya Goule)
7:45 p.m. – Women’s 200 Meters Semifinals (Samantha Henry-Robinson)
7:55 p.m. – Men’s 200 Meters Semifinals (Renard Howell)
Sunday, July 3
5:40 p.m. – Women’s 100 Hurdles Semifinals (Nickiesha Wilson)
6 p.m. – Women’s 400 Meters Final (Jonique Day)
6:10 p.m. – Men’s 400 Meters Final (Fitzroy Dunkley, Riker Hylton)
6:25 p.m. – Women’s 200 Meters Final (Samantha Henry-Robinson)
6:40 p.m. – Men’s 200 Meters Final (Renard Howell)
6:55 p.m. – Women’s 100 Hurdles Final (Nickiesha Wilson)
