BATON ROUGE -- Championship week kicked off with a bang Monday for the top-ranked LSU women’s track and field team as senior Kelly Baptiste and junior Andrea Linton received regional honors from the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
Baptiste was named this year’s South Central Region Women’s Track Athlete of the Year by the organization, while Linton was named the region’s Women’s Field Athlete of the Year.
Baptiste, a native of Plymouth, Scarborough, Trinidad, helped lead the Lady Tigers to their first SEC Indoor championship since 1999 by winning her first career league title in the 60-meter dash with a new school record and NCAA leading time of 7.13 seconds.
Baptiste, who became LSU’s first SEC champion in the 60 meters since former Lady Tiger great Muna Lee accomplished the feat in 2004, broke the previous school record of 7.15 set by Lee during the indoor season in 2003. Baptiste’s time of 7.13 is also a meet record for the SEC Indoor Track and Field Championships.
Baptiste is looking to repeat her success from a year ago when she was the national runner-up in the 200 meters at the NCAA Indoor Championships. She is set to double in the 60 and 200 meters at this year’s meet as she currently ranks No. 5 in the nation with a top 200-meter time of 23.07.
Linton won her second career SEC triple jump title and her first indoors with an overall personal best effort of 44 feet, 6 ¼ inches at the conference meet last weekend.
The native of Montego Bay, Jamaica, finished nearly two feet ahead of her nearest competitor in the triple jump at the SEC meet as her NCAA automatic qualifying mark currently ranks No. 5 by a collegiate athlete this season. She is also an automatic qualifier in the long jump after finishing third in the event at the conference meet with an overall personal best mark of 20-10.
Linton was the team’s top individual scorer at the SEC Indoor Championships as her 16 points equaled the effort of teammate Samantha Henry, who finished runner-up in both the 60 and 200.
The duo will lead the Lady Tigers’ effort this weekend at the 2008 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships as the squad is looking to win its first indoor national title since 2004 and its 12th NCAA indoor crown in the program’s storied history. The two-day meet gets underway Friday at the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Ark.