Austin Peay Sports Information
Brentwood, TN – Junior sprinter Breigh Jones and sophomore jumper Kaylnn Pitts, of the Austin Peay State University track and field team, were named 2015 Ohio Valley Conference Outdoor Women’s Track and Co-Field Athletes of the Year, respectively, Thursday after a vote by the conference’s coaches.
These honors are bestowed one day before Austin Peay gets set to host the 2015 OVC Outdoor Championships, a two-day event set for a 9:00am, Friday, start time.
Pitts is the first field winner since Carrie Burggraf in 2010 and the first outdoor honoree with a field-event concentration since Jen Pond in 2007.
Together, they make 2015 the first time Austin Peay has enjoyed a pair of honorees since Sheena Gooding and Ayesha Maycock each won for the 2001 indoor season.
After two seasons assaulting the record books, Jones’ junior campaign has been yet another testament to her greatness. The magnificent Memphian has two wins in her specialty, the 400m dash, and has branched out to the 200m as well, picking up two wins and coming within one-hundredth of a second of claiming the school record in that event as well.
Jones leads all OVC competitors in the 400m dash thanks to her 53.93 mark in April’s Florida Relays. She ranks third in the 200m dash, but is less than a tenth of a second off the conference lead in that event thanks to her 24.05 run two weeks ago in her homecoming at the Memphis Invitational.
With Jones running anchor, Austin Peay’s 4×100 and 4x400m relay teams also have experienced success in 2015. She’s led APSU to five victories total (two in the 4×100, three in the 4×400) and rankings of third and second, respectively, in those events entering the weekend.
After reaching the NCAA East Preliminary round in each of her first two seasons at Austin Peay and advancing to the NCAA Championships a year ago, Jones is again poised to run at the highest possible levels after the conference season concludes. Her season-best 400m mark ranks 47th in the region entering the weekend – a weekend which should be a mere prelude before a trip to Jacksonville, FL, for the East Preliminary Round.
Pitts stands to join Jones once more at the NCAA’s preliminary level and could certainly advance beyond this season. The Woonsocket, RI native ranks 10th in the region and 15th nationally in the triple jump, leading the OVC thanks to her school-record 12.92m (42-4.75) leap at the Memphis Invitational.
Pitts has yet to finish lower than runner-up in six triple jump attempts this season, coming away with four straight victories to start the outdoor campaign. As such, she has won or shared adidas®/OVC Female Field Athlete of the Week honors on four occasions, including three times April alone.
Since her first triple jump as a freshman to her last attempt two weeks ago at Memphis, Pitts has added more than four feet to her distance – a pace that would place her at national-championship levels should her development continue at its current course.
Her 5.94m (19-6) long jump mark also ranks near the top of the conference at third, less than a foot behind Murray State’s Ashley Conway, the OVC leader in the event. Her season’s lone long jump win to this point came at last month’s APSU Invitational, her home track and site of the 2015 OVC Outdoor Track and Field Championships, scheduled to begin Friday at Governors Stadium.
