The LSU women earned a fifth-place finish on Saturday night at the NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships that was hosted at the Birmingham CrossPlex in Alabama. The LSU women brought home 25.5 points on the final day of the competition to raise their total to 29.5 after Lisa Gunnarsson scored four points on Friday night.
Gunnarsson, the reigning indoor national champion from 2021, finished fifth overall in the pole vault competition. She cleared four bars with a final height of 14 feet and five and a half inches (4.41 meters). This is the sixth First Team All-America honor of her career.
Favour Ofili scored in three events for the Tigers with quality performances in the 60 meters, 200 meters, and 4×400 meter relay. Her first scoring effort of the day was a time of 7.25 seconds in the 60-meter dash to place seventh. She returned to the track 40 minutes later and dropped a time of 22.50 in the 200-meter dash to earn her first career individual NCAA medal as she took second in the event. She closed out her night by anchoring the LSU 4×400 meter relay to a seventh-place finish with a time of 3:31.81. In those three events, Ofili tallied 10.5 points for the Tigers. She was joined on the 4×400 meter relay by leadoff leg Amber Anning, second leg, Michaela Rose, and third leg Garriel White.
Nyagoa Bayak and Abigail O’Donoghue also contributed on Friday by scoring 8.5 points for the Tigers in the high jump. Bayak cleared a personal-best height of six feet, one and a quarter inch (1.86 meters) on her third and final attempt at the height to secure fourth place. She was one of four women remaining in the competition when the bar went to six feet, two and a quarter inches (1.89 meters), but she was unable to clear that height. It’s her third career First Team All-America honor, and it moved her into a three-way tie on the all-time LSU list at the No. 3 spot in the high jump. O’Donoghue finished tied for fifth with a height of 6’ (1.83 meters) and it was her fifth career First Team All-America honor.
Leah Phillips placed fourth in the 60-meter hurdles with a final time of 8.01 seconds to earn her first career All-America honor. Alia Armstrong false-started in the finals of the 60-meter hurdles.
The LSU men finished in a three-way tie for 24th with nine team points. The Purple and Gold received scoring performances from John Meyer (shot put), Apalos Edwards (triple jump), and Eric Edwards Jr. (60m hurdles). Meyer set the school record with a third-round catapult of 66 feet, four and a quarter inches (20.22 meters) to earn a fifth-place finish and broke Joe Macieczyk’s previous school record of 66 feet and a quarter inch (20.12 meters) that was set in 1981.
Edwards earned the first All-America honor of his young career by taking fifth in the triple jump with a personal-best mark of 53 feet, two and a quarter inches (16.21 meters) on his second attempt of the night. Fellow triple jumper Sean Dixon-Bodie placed 10th in the event with a mark of 51 feet, 6 and a quarter inches (15.70 meters).
Edwards Jr. in the 60-meter hurdles was LSU’s final point scorer of the meet on the men’s side. He shot out of the blocks with a lead after clearing the first two hurdles before he clipped the fourth one and it threw him off balance. He tumbled through the finish line with a time of 8.24 to place eighth.
Indoor season is over and outdoor season is here. LSU track and field will head to Tempe, Arizona, for the Baldy Castillo Invitational on March 18-19.