St. John's University Athletics
St. John's University
Outdoor NCAA Regional Championships
Frederick Qualifies For NCAA National Finals
6/1/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Track and Field
June 1, 2009
QUEENS, N.Y. - St. John's sophomore Priscilla Frederick qualified for her second-straight NCAA National Finals in the high jump, after a successful weekend at the NCAA East Regional competition; hosted by North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, N.C.
Frederick, from Sicklerville, N.J., tied for fourth in the high jump with a height of 1.78 meters (5 feet, 10 inches), directly tying Patience Coleman of North Carolina to advance to the NCAA National Finals for the second-consecutive season. Frederick's season-long rival, Carin Knight a junior from University of Connecticut, won the event with a facility-record height of 1.84 meters (6 feet, 0.5 inches).
Along with Frederick, Knight and Coleman; Monique Roberts, a rookie from Columbia and Becky Christensen, a senior from Harvard will be competing at the NCAA National Finals held in Fayetteville, Arkansas on June 10-13.
Frederick will begin competition on Wednesday, June 10 for the first qualifying round at 5:30 p.m. The women's high jump finals will take place on Friday, June 12 at 4 p.m.
Senior Venisa Clarke-Lee also competed with Frederick in the event, but recorded no height. In her final season with St. John's, Clarke-Lee, a native of Jamaica, qualified for the Regionals with a runner-up finish at the Metropolitan Championships (April 18), where she cleared the bar at 1.75 meters (5 feet, 8.75 inches). The senior also competed in multiple events for the Red Storm as she was also an integral leg in St. John's school record-breaking 4x100-meter relay team, which fell .09 seconds shy of a Regional qualifier.
Senior Phobay Kutu-Akoi finished 13th in the preliminaries with a time of 11.73 seconds, tied with NeKisha Franklin from Delaware State. Kutu-Akoi finished fourth in her heat, and her time was just thousands of a second slower than Franklin, making her just miss the top 12 who qualify for the National Finals.
The senior had a standout season setting a St. John's record in the 100-meter dash as the Metropolitan Champion with a career-best time of 11.52 seconds. Her time was also an unofficial Liberian record, as the senior is a native of Liberia and may compete in their national championships later in June.
Kutu-Akoi finished first or second in all 11 races this season. She was won the Metropolitan Championships in both the 100-meter and 200-meter dash, was the BIG EAST Championship runner-up in 100-meter dash and the fourth-place finisher in the 200-meter dash. Kutu-Akoi, the team's captain, ran the second leg in the school-record breaking 4x100-meter relay team along with Clarke-Lee. She also ran the anchor of the 4x200-meter relay squad that broke another school record at the Penn Relays (April 25).
Graduate student Arina Gerasimova finished 18th in the triple jump event with a distance of 12.28 meters (40 feet, 3.5 inches). Gerasimova, who joined the Red Storm in her final year of eligibility after competing for University at Albany for her undergraduate career, qualified for this year's East Regionals at the NYC Qualifying Challenge (May 9), where she hit a season-best distance of 12.51 meters (41 feet, .5 inches) and finished second overall. Gerasimova, a native of Ukraine, had a successful year in conference meets, as she finished as the BIG EAST runner up in the outdoor triple jump and fifth at the ECAC Championships, earning all-league honors at both meets. In the indoor season, Gerasimova also won the Indoor BIG EAST triple jump competition, the first St. John's Indoor BIG EAST Individual Champion since Kaydian Reid in the 500-meter dash in 2006. The 4x400-meter relay squad also won that year.
"We're very pleased; we had three student-athletes finish in the top 18 in the region," said head coach Jim Hurt. "We're looking forward to have Priscilla get to the NCAA Nationals again. Hopefully, she can improve from last year and score some points for us. Her performance this weekend was great, she had the best set of jumps she's had since the indoor season"
Players Mentioned
