After a stellar weekend of jumping, which saw her walking away with two NCAA Outdoor Championships titles, Jamaican and Texas Longhorn athlete Ackelia Smith declared herself a legend, and rightly so.
“Call me a legend cause the records show it,” she wrote on her social media pages.
Smith clinched her victory with a third attempt mark of 6.79m (22-3.50), making history as the first Longhorn woman in 18 years to secure back-to-back titles at the NCAA Outdoor meet. The last to achieve such a feat was Destinee Hooker, who won the high jump in 2006-07.
On Saturday, she returned to complete the horizontal jumps glory, winning the triple jump with a collegiate-leading jump of 14.52m (47-7.25). She missed the NCAA Championship meet record by two centimeters but recorded the fifth-best jump in NCAA history. Her double victory made her the first Longhorn in Texas history to win both at the same championship meet and the first to win the triple jump since Terri Turner in 1986. Smith has now scored 38 team points in the last two outdoor championships.
She boasts, “Texas #1 triple jumper and record holder, Texas #2 best long jumper,” while reminding her followers that after three years at Texas Longhorns, she has “15 trophies and tons of memories. Hook ‘em horns.” ALSO READ, Jamaican Ackelia Smith and Record-Breaker Leo Neugebauer Spotlighted on Bowerman Watch…
Smith is a former Edwin Allen student/athlete.
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