By Nate Perry, TTU Sports Information
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. – For the second time this outdoor season, Tennessee Tech track and field standouts Khemani Roberts and Purity Sanga reeled in a sweep of the Ohio Valley Conference Athlete of the Week awards. Released by the league office Wednesday, Roberts clinched her third Field Athlete of the Week honor of the outdoor season, while Sanga took home Track Athlete of the Week for the second time.
Roberts turned heads on the national scale with her second-place heptathlon performance at the Virginia Challenge. Her score of 5,482 points is the best in TTU history, surpassing the previous mark of 5,353 points that she also held. The total ranks eighth on the NCAA Division I East Outdoor Qualifying List and 21st on the NCAA Division I Combined List, and tops the OVC Outdoor Performance List by a whopping 693 points.
The runner-up finish came in a field of 17 competitors, which included representatives from Power 5-conference programs Michigan State, N.C. State, Boston College and Ohio State, among others.
Of the seven events, the senior from Trinidad and Tobago took first place in two of them – the high jump and the 200 meters.
She was the only entrant to clear 1.77 meters in the high jump (5 feet, 9 3/4 inches), which matched yet another Tech outdoor record that Roberts already had on her resume. She has now won the high jump portion in all six of her multi-event appearances (pentathlon and heptathlon). She smoked the competition in the 200, posting a time of 25.24 seconds, more than seven-tenths of a second faster than the No. 2 finisher (25.95).
Roberts garnered a second-place finish in the long jump segment, recording her second-best distance all-time and best-ever as part of a multi-event competition, 5.89 meters (19-4).
She came in fourth in the shot put and fifth in the javelin, as she turned in all-time personal bests of 11.97 meters (39-3 1/4) and 34.26 meters (112-5), respectively.
She also recorded a sixth-place result in the 800 meters with a time of 2-minutes, 25.11-seconds, and finished ninth in the 100-meter hurdles – her lowest in any event – with a mark of 14.65 seconds.
Sanga attempted the 5,000 meters for the third time in her outdoor career at the Virginia Challenge, and posted the top time in the OVC this season, 16-minutes, 37.06-seconds. Sanga's time leads the league by almost 15 seconds, and cracks the NCAA Division I East Qualifying List at No. 76.
The mark was also an all-time personal best for the Kapsabet, Kenya native, as she cut more than nine seconds off her previous top mark, 16:46.31. It was also 41 seconds faster than her previous best outdoors, 17:18.06, and came up less than seven seconds behind Micayla Rennick's outdoor program record, 16:30.27. Just as she did for much of the indoor season, Sanga now owns the No. 1 marks in the OVC for three different distance events: the 1,500 meters (4:26.32), the 5,000 meters, and the 10,000 meters (34:13.03).
With its outdoor total now up to five, Tennessee Tech track and field has recorded an overwhelming total of 12 OVC Athlete of the Week awards in 2018-19.
Photos by Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
