Purdue Women’s Track Finishes 8th at NCAA Championships

Lonnie Greene continues to produce world class athletes as Purdue’s track & field coach. At this weekend’s NCAA championships in Eugene, Oregon, Purdue produced a large number of All-Americans. In fact, the women very nearly brough home a national championship in one of the relay events and finished 8th as a team in all events.

The closest we came to a national champinoship was in the women’s 4x400 relay. Chloe Abbott, Brionna Thomas, Symone Black, and Jahneya Mitchell were leading for most of the race, but a final push by USC allowed the Trojan team to clip the Boilers at the end by 7 one-hundredths of a second. The result was challenged, but USC was confirmed as the winner with their late push.

Unfortunately, the video shows we turned Purdue into a verb again.

It ended up being a huge push, as USC won the women’s team championship with 53 points to 52 from Georgia. Had Purdue held on to win, Georgia would have won both the men’s and women’s team championships. Purdue’s women were 8th with 34 points, behind USC, Georgia, Stanford, Kentucky, Florida, LSU, and Oregon. The 8th place finish is the best in school history.

Purdue gots its points from the usual suspects. Black finished 4th in the 400 meter hurdles to get five points. Abbott finished 5th individually in the 400 to get four points. Thomas established a new school record in the 400 at 50.78 to finish third and earn a bronze indivudallt. Devynne Charlton was runner-up in the 100 meter hurdles in a time of 12.77. Savannah Carson was 6th in the long jump for three more points.

On the men’s side Ashmon Lucas scored the only points. He finished 6th in the discus, earning three points for a 55th place team finish.