Written by Tim Hoffstaetter
To wrap up the 2023-2024 Indoor Track season Roanoke College had two athletes compete at nationals and both earned all-American honors! The two amazing athletes are senior Kaitlyn Nguyen and junior Brady Fowler. This is the first time in my tenure here that we have sent multiple athletes to nationals, and I hope to be the start of a precedent of Roanoke athletes competing at the highest level!
Let’s start with Kaitlyn’s performance at nationals, Kaitlyn competed in the high jump on Saturday the 9th. Kaitlyn tied her personal record to secure the 9th spot overall earning her second-team all-American. Her jump of 1.68 meters is around 5 feet and 6 inches and this is the second-highest jump in our school’s history. She is shooting for the school record in outdoor and has a fantastic shot at achieving this. This would lead her to becoming the best high jumper in school history. You can also already make the argument she is the school’s best high jumper as she has 4 ODAC medals and claimed the championship in her sophomore year during indoor track. Kaitlyn put on a show in her final indoor track season and deserves all the praise and winning because she works so incredibly hard for it!
Now onto Brady, Brady made it to nationals in both the 60-meter dash and the 200-meter dash! These two sprint events have preliminary races to make it to finals on Saturday. In his preliminary races on Friday Brady ran two personal bests and two school records to secure a spot in finals for both events. He blew both of his previous bests out of the water on Friday and then came back on Saturday and nearly tied his personal record in the 60. Then, ran another personal best and school record in the 200! These new records placed him 8th in the 60 and 5th in the 200! These two placements earned him first-team all-American honors for the first time in his career. He went to nationals last year and competed well, but he followed up that this year with being a two-time all-American. After this outstanding performance, it is impossible to say that Roanoke has had a talent better than Brady in terms of the short sprints because he has been so dominant in the ODAC conference. He has beat his own school record countless times, and is now performing so highly against the rest of the competition in the NCAA. Much like Kaitlyn, Brady also deserves this praise and recognition because of the tremendous amount of work that he puts in!
If you see these athletes, please congratulate them, and give them courage heading into this outdoor season so they are able to replicate their success from this past season and hopefully can earn even more all-American honors this coming season!
