Ball State Track and Field athletes junior Jenelle Rogers and senior Charity Griffith return to Muncie with an impressive list of accomplishments, including a National Champion crown for Griffith.
Rogers finished fifth in the heptathlon. She and Griffith were named All-Americans for their performances this season. It is the first time in school history that Ball State has produced multiple outdoor All-Americans in the same season, it is also the first time two Cardinals were within the top 10 in the NCAA Outdoor Championship.
“I'm excited that the young ladies have reached reach their goals and have been in positions to represent themselves, represent our program and the university,” head coach Adrian Wheatley said. “It’s really exciting to see that.”
Building up to the competition, Wheatley told his athletes to just “do what they do” and not to overthink anything ahead of them.
“We work on really controlling the controllable,” Wheatley said. “We can't control what other people do. We can't control the weather. We can't control these things here, but what we can control is how we're going compete and we're going to take that mindset if there's a competition. That is really what we say and we have talked all year long and said why not us, why not us?”
Griffith secured the title with her jump of 1.93 meters, or six feet four inches, which is a personal best and school best. This is Ball State’s first National Champion since 1999.
Griffith said that she gives all glory to God and that without God it wouldn’t mean anything. She also thanked the support that she has received around her. She said he was happy that she could go out and execute on the day it was most important.
“I knew from my other attempts that I could clear those bars,” Griffith said. “I definitely don't want to mess anything up by changing anything. There's no need to change anything. So I just went to that jump confident, doing the exact same thing I was doing and visualizing over and over.”
Griffith placed fifth last year at the meet, but this year exceeded her performance last year.
“I always tell myself that I wasn't here for myself,” Griffith said. “I'm here for God, but to actually do it and act upon it, that I am really really not here for myself. It just helped me relax, have fun, and encourage others around me to do good. I was having a lot of fun just encouraging others around me to relax and have fun as well and just lifting others up.”
The track and field NCAA Championship is a total of four days. The first two days have the men compete and the last two days see the women compete.
For Rogers, she competed on both days in the heptathlon, an event that has the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200-meter, long jump, javelin throw and the 800-meter.
The first day saw the first four events play out and the last day had the last three. After the first four events, Rogers was sitting in first place with three events to go. She ended up fifth with a personal best in five of the vents.
“I don't think it's really set in just yet, but I'm just looking back and I'm just so grateful for the opportunity and just grateful about the coaching and just the great teammates that I've had,” Rogers said.
Since Rogers competes over two days, she said to stay in the zone throughout the competition for her she just takes one step at a time to stay focused.
Rogers said that she felt blessed to have the opportunity to have that experience of competing at the NCAA Championships.
Rogers’s 6,018 heptathlon points set a school record and a personal best.
Wheatley said that assistant track and field coach Matt Bigelow did a phenomenal job in helping both Griffith and Rogers to perform to the best of their abilities and working with them to help them throughout the meet.
“We're extremely excited about what we've done this year,” Wheatley said. “And, again, we're going to continue to build upon it.”
Contact Elijah Poe with comments at elijah.poe@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ElijahPoe4.
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