The U.S. Track & Field and Cross-Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) has announced that six members of the Tigers’ Track & Field programme have earned All-American honours following their qualification for the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships this past March.
Among those six individuals is Guyanese middle-distance sensation Andrea Foster. The other recipients are Devon Brooks, LaFranz Campbell, Marcus Parker, Laurie Barton, and Rebekah Smith, all US-based athletes.
This is the first NCAA Division I Indoor All-American honours for Foster, who is currently a student athlete at the Clemson University in South Carolina, USA.
Foster and Barton have made Clemson the only school with multiple athletes in the women’s 800-metre event for this year’s Indoor National Championships. The two were set to enter the meet following their 1-2 sweep of the event at the ACC Indoor Championships, with Barton winning the event in a season’s best time of 2:04.04 and Foster earning a new personal best with her result of 2:04.98.
These results have made Barton the fourth-best performer in program history, while Foster is now tied for sixth-best on the programme’s all-time list. Barton and Foster also rank fourth and fifth respectively on the all-time list for the women’s 1,000-metre event, following their performances earlier in the season.
This is the second time in programme history that two women have earned All-American honours in an event in the same season. The first occurrence was in 2018, when Kamryn McIntosh and Fellan Ferguson combined for second-team All-American honours.
Rebekah Smith earned All-American honours in the women’s 60-metre event after running the fourteenth-best time in the country with her mark of 7.23 secs, which she ran at the LSU Twilight, as well as during the preliminary round of the event at the ACC Indoor Championships. Smith’s mark served as a personal best and made her the No. 3 performer in programme history for the event. Following Smith’s performance at the LSU Twilight on Feb. 21, she was named the ACC Women’s Track Performer of the Week.
This is the first time in Clemson’s history that All-American honours have been earned in the women’s 800- metre and 60-metre events in the same season.
In accordance with the decision made by the USTFCCCA Board of Directors, all athletes declared as a part of the post-medical scratches start list have earned All-American honours for the Indoor Season. There is no distinction of first-team, second-team or honorable mention with this year’s recognitions. A total of 671 honours were handed out to 119 different institutions on Tuesday.
