ALLENDALE, Mich. – Three individual national champions propelled Azusa Pacific to its first team NCAA National Championship in school history as the Cougars won the 2021 NCAA Division II Women’s Outdoor Track & Field National Championship with a score of 81 points.
 
Grand Valley State, host of the national championship meet, led the team scoring for most of Saturday, but the Cougars had their strongest events toward the end of the meet. Strong performances in the discus, 10,000 meters, and heptathlon made the Cougars title contenders going into Saturday, but Azusa Pacific needed several student-athletes to step up in order to win the title.
 
A significant moment came around 6:15 p.m. during the high jump and the start of the 100-meter dash. Azusa Pacific’s Chinenye Agina, one of two athletes left in the high jump after clearing 1.82 meters for her fifth clearance in a row, was guaranteed to add at least eight points to the Cougars’ score. Then the gun went off on the 100-meter dash, and Mechaela Hyacinth needed just 11.67 seconds to add 10 more points to Azusa Pacific’s score as she finished in first place to become an individual national champ.
 
Back at the high jump Agina was the only athlete to clear 1.82 meters, making her the national champion for Azusa Pacific’s second individual title of the meet. Agina then went on to clear 1.85 meters for good measure on her third attempt, setting a new lifetime best and becoming only the second Cougar in program history to clear six feet.
 
That completed the field events with only four track events left in the meet and Grand Valley State leading Azusa Pacific 64-61. Both teams had runners in three of the four remaining events.
 
Jaylah Walker followed shortly thereafter in the 400-meter hurdles.  Walker who finished second in the 100-meter hurdles earlier in the day and had competed in the Cougars’ 4x100 relay, dominated her third race of the day, leading start to finish to capture their third individual crown within an hour with a winning time of 57.29 seconds.
 
That gave Azusa Pacific its first lead since the start of the day at 71-66 with three events left as Hyacinth got ready for her second final of the day. Running in the 200-meter dash, she got out of the blocks quickly for an early lead and finished strong to take fourth place with a time of 23.55 seconds for her second All-American finish. Her five points pushed the Cougars’ overall score to 76, while the Lakers stayed at 66 with no runner qualifying for the 200 finals.
 
The Cougars’ 10-point advantage was precarious heading into the final two events, the 5,000 meters, which featured three GVSU runners taking on the Cougars’ Jenny Sandoval, who already had a runner-up finish from Thursday’s 10,000 meters, and the 4x400-meter relay. In the 5K, the three Lakers started in the back of the pack, while Sandoval was in fourth place after the first mile. With each passing lap, the Lakers moved up in the field, and Sandoval stayed between fourth and fifth place. With three laps left, the Lakers had moved into the scoring positions, and were catching runners in front of them.
 
In the final lap, Sandoval was comfortably in fourth place, but two Lakers were now in scoring position and GVSU’s Hannah Roeske was narrowing the gap between her and Sandoval. The Cougar runner held onto her lead over the final 100 meters and finished fourth with a time of 16:11.31 for five points added to Azusa Pacific’s total. Roeske finished fifth, two seconds behind, and the Lakers had another runner in seventh place to cut the Cougar advantage to 81-72. Each of the three runners that finished ahead of Sandoval also finished ahead of the previous meet record, making it the fastest 5,000-meter race in NCAA Division II National Championships history.
 
Without an entry in the 4x400-meter relay finals, Azusa Pacific could only stand by and watch Grand Valley State in the meet’s final event.  The Lakes needed an event win to tally ten points, just enough to overcome the Cougars and win the national title by a point. PacWest mate Fresno Pacific, however, was one of three teams that made sure the Lakers didn’t pull off a last-event comeback, finishing ahead Lakers making Azusa Pacific officially national champions.
 
Fresno Pacific’s quartet of Chloe Sharp, Mikaela Smith, Madison Flores and Danae Manibog earned their spot on the podium with a second-place finish in a time of 3:41.61 for All-American honors. It was the second time in the meet that the Sunbirds earned a spot on the podium after having finished in sixth place in the 4x100 relay. Fresno Pacific had a team score of 11 to finish in 22nd place out of 81 teams that qualified for the National Championships.
 
Academy of Art finished the meet in 12th place with 20 points after three more Urban Knights earned All-American finishes. Marie-Joanne Ourega had four All-American performances herself. She was part of the Academy of Art 4x100 relay team that took seventh place, and she took fifth place individually in the 100-meter hurdles. In the 1500, Natalia Novak took eighth place in a time of 4:23.19 to add another point for Academy of Art.
 
This national title adds to a long history of success for the Cougars’ track & field program. Azusa Pacific joined the PacWest nine years ago after having established itself as the premier program in the NAIA. While success at the NCAA Division II level has never alluded the school during its nine years since starting the transition, a first NCAA National Championship trophy was still missing from the Hall of Champions in the Felix Event Center.
 
Azusa Pacific has reached the national quarterfinals in men’s basketball, women’s tennis and twice in women’s basketball. The Cougars came closest to their first national title in men’s tennis in 2018, reaching the national semifinals. However, it’s no surprise that the first NCAA Championship in school history came from the Cougars’ storied track & field program.
 
Jack Hoyt took over the program in 2017 and has guided the Cougars to their fifth-straight PacWest titles in both men’s and women’s track & field. The five-time PacWest Coach of the Year has been adding pieces to create a national contender over the past four years. In the end, Azusa Pacific had three individual national champions, three runners-up, and 13 total All-Americans at the 2021 National Championships to bring the first NCAA title back to the campus in Azusa.