ALLENDALE, Mich. – Academy of Art’s Marie-Jeanne Ourega won the long jump national title to lead all performances by the PacWest athletes at the 2021 NCAA Division II Outdoor National Championships, and Azusa Pacific is in second place for the women followed by Academy of Art in third place.
 
Ourega recorded all of the four best jumps in the long jump on Thursday to win the event. She opened with a jump of 6.26 meters to move into first place. Then was passed by only three centimeters in the second round of jumps. However, the freshman retook the lead with a jump of 6.40 meters in the third round, which went on to be the best jump of the day for the national champion.
 
In the final race of the first day of the national championships, Jenny Sandoval took second place in the 10,000 meters with a time of 34:05.83 to give Azusa Pacific eight of its 12 points on the first day. Sandoval was one of two runners leading the pack for the first half of the race, completing each lap in around 83 seconds for the first 6,000 meters. Then eventual champion Ida Narbuvoll made her move to pull ahead of the pack. Sandoval was able to hang with Narbuvoll for the next two laps to create a large gap between second and third place. She then held onto that lead over the final two miles and took second place.
 
Azusa Pacific entered the meet as the No. 1-ranked team in the country for women’s track & field, and projections based on the entry list have the Cougars as the favorite to win the national title this year. West Texas A&M, Missouri Southern and host Grand Valley State are among the top contenders to challenge the favorite. Grand Valley State surpassed projections on the first day and scored 22 points in the first day to take first place to start the meet. Azusa Pacific is now projected to finish the meet in the high 70s, while GVSU has boosted its projected final score into the low 50s with 17 events left to be scored.
 
Azusa Pacific got strong results in both the long jump and the hammer to gain four points, where the Cougars were not projected to win any. Nicole Warwick took sixth place in the long jump with a distance of 5.95 meters for three points. Elle Alexander also got All-American honors in the hammer. Competing in the hammer for the final time of her decorated collegiate career, Alexander was in ninth place going into the final hammer throw of her career. Her final throw was her best of the day with a mark of 55.97 meters, which was enough to move into eighth place and earn a point for the Cougars.
 
In the heptathlon, four of the top 10 athletes are from the PacWest. Maegan Warwick is in second place overall with a score of 3,228, while Nicole Warwick is in fifth place with 3,132 points. Jordan Hammond is in ninth place for Azusa Pacific, and Biola’s Rebeka Preston is in 10th place.
 
In the shot put, the Warwick sisters had the two best marks of the event with each posting new season-bests. Maegan Warwick won the event with a throw of 11.90 meters for 654 points, putting her in good position to record her best heptathlon score of the year with three events left. She finished the regular season in fourth place on the performance list.
 
On the men’s side, the PacWest had one All-American with Jermell Jones II taking eighth place in the long jump. On his third jump, he recorded a mark of 7.36 meters, which was the sixth-best jump at the time and was good enough to earn a spot in the finals. Jones came close to that mark twice in the final three jumps, but 7.36 meters was his best mark at the end of the day and it merited an All-American award.
 
Eight PacWest athletes qualified for the final during the prelim of track events on Thursday. That includes three women’s 4x100-meter relay teams from the PacWest with Academy of Art, Azusa Pacific and Fresno Pacific all earning a spot in the final.
 
Four more events for each gender are set to finish on Friday, including the multis being wrapped up in the morning. The discus, steeplechase, men’s high jump and women’s triple jump are also set to be scored by the end of Friday’s action. Alexander will compete in the women’s discuss and ranks third on the performance list going into the event, and Academy of Art has three athletes competing in the triple jump.