The Texas A&M women’s track and field team placed second with three national titles and set two collegiate records at the NCAA Outdoor Championships at Hayward Field on Saturday, June 12.
Athing Mu, Tyra Gittens, Tierra Robinson-Jones, Charokee Young and Jaevin Reed all contributed to national titles as A&M won a field event, open race and relay race. Mu won the national title in the 400-meter with a time of 49.57, beating her own collegiate record by .11 seconds in the final meet of the 2021 season.
After Mu won her first individual national title as a freshman, she anchored the 4×400-meter team to a championship with a split of 48.85. Robinson-Jones, Young and Reed joined Mu in breaking the all-time collegiate record with a time of 3:22.34. The relay team won the indoor 4×400-meter title in March, completing the sweep and defending their previous outdoor title from the NCAA Championships in 2019.
“Everyone thinks that [Mu] is going to run off and leave everybody. She does, but she still has some challenges,” head coach Pat Henry told 12thman.com. “It’s not just about winning. Her challenges are running faster all the time, and that’s tough but she continues to do it.”
After leading the heptathlon by 162 points with 3,834 points on day one, Gittens won the national title with a total of 6,285 points. She finished sixth in the 100-meter hurdles at 13.46 to give her 1,056 points and followed with winning the high jump, clearing 1.84 and moving her score to 2,085 points. She threw 13.31m in the shot put and ran a 23.79 in the 200-meter to conclude the first day.
“We knew that we didn’t have a lot of bullets, but we knew that we have an elite group of ladies that can score,” Henry told 12thman.com. “Tyra [Gittens] to score 24 points in this competition is huge and she is still a junior on top of that.”
Gittens started day two by jumping 6.64m in the long jump, bringing her score to 4,887 points. She followed by throwing a personal best 41.24m in the javelin to add 691 points to her score. She clocked a 2:28.88 in the 800-meter to conclude the event to add on an additional 707 points and win the outdoor title. Gittens won the indoor pentathlon title earlier in the season.
Gittens joined freshman Lamara Distin in the open high jump, where Distin placed second at 1.90m. Gittens placed third at 1.87m. Distin cleared her first attempt at 1.73m, then the next five heights, to become the third-best performer in Aggie history.
Deborah Acquah earned First Team All-American honors after jumping 13.95m in the triple jump to place fourth. Young finished fifth in the 400-meter final with a time of 51.13.
A&M earned 63 total team points to finish second and break the school record for most points scored by a team. They finished behind Southern California who had 74 points.