By Carlena Knight
Reigning Junior Sportswoman Woman of the Year and 2021 SEC Indoor 60m Champion Joella Lloyd has broken the Women’s National 100m record.
Running at home at the Tennessee Challenge on Saturday, the Lady Vols standout recovered from a slow start to overtake fast starting compatriot, Maia McCoy, speeding cross the line in 11.19 seconds.
Lloyd has now dethroned former National record holder and Director of Sports, Heather Samuel-Daley who set the 11.20 time in May 1993 – 9 years before Lloyd was born.
“I was both surprised and relieved when I looked back at the clock. My previous personal time was 11.43 and I was amazed to see it drop by 0.24 seconds. I’ve been putting in a lot of effort in training so it was a relief to see it finally paying off,” Lloyd said.
Lloyd’s clocking now puts her at #1 in the World Athletics rankings for U20 females, and #24 for females overall. She will now look forward to mirroring her indoor feat at the SEC Outdoor Championships from May 13th to 15th.
Her time was also just outside the Olympic qualifying standard of 11.15.
Meanwhile, national triple jumper Taeco O’Garro was named the 2021 Northeast Conference Long Jump Champion.
The diminutive O’Garro, known for his logic defying leaps in the Triple Jump, stepped over to the lesser technical jumping event and stamped his authority over the weekend.
The former Junior Soca monarch let his intentions known with the first jump of 7.01m to break the IC4A qualification of 7.00m. It only took one more jump for O’Garro to separate himself from the boys as he leaped to a Personal best (PB) of 7.35m for the gold medal and maximum points for the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights.
Second in the event was Dylan Lanoue (7.14m) of Mount St. Mary’s while O’Garro’s teammate, Salif Mane was third with a 7.12m effort.
O’Garro, a day later would go on to finish third in his marquee event, the triple jump.
He jumped to a new PB of 15.75m for the bronze medal finishing behind his teammate Salif Mane and LIU’s Jahsira Dunabr who finished first and second respectively with distances of 16.04m and 15.92m.
“I’m very happy with this weekend’s performances and I’m looking forward to putting on my National Uniform this summer to represent Antigua once again. With two personal bests after roughly 2 months of proper training due to Covid-19 limitations, I’m happy that I could do this well and there’s definitely more in store,” said O’Garro when asked about his performance.
O’Garro also made the All-Conference Honors for the 2nd event in a row.