April 3, 2018
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Georgia Tech outdoor track and field highlighted a group of No. 1 times nationally in the Atlantic Coast Conference as Avery Bartlett and the hurdle relay team of Marinice Bauman, Raven Stewart, Kenya Collins and Jeanine Williams earned the conference’s weekly performance awards, it was announced Tuesday.
Junior Bartlett led the way for the Georgia Tech in his home state of Florida at the UF Relays, winning a barnburner in the 800m with an ACC qualifying time of 1:47.76 – a mark that currently leads the country. In an ultra-competitive field, the top-three times nationally were set in his heat with Bartlett edging out all others by 0.14 seconds. The Florida-native’s first-place time stretches his lead as the top time in the ACC, now No. 1 by nearly two, full seconds.
Georgia Tech now holds the top two times in the conference for the 800m, with Andres Littig currently ranking second with his Florida Relay performance.
Also at the Florida Relays, the shuttle relay team of Bauman, Stewart, Collins and Williams charged to a record-setting performance, taking first place overall with a program-record time of 53.16. Ranking as the ninth-fastest performance all-time in NCAA history, the mark breaks a 13-year-old record set at Georgia Tech in 2005 by Shantia Moss, Fatmata Fofanah, Adriane Butler (formerly Lapsley) and Chaunte Howard – a group that individually amasses six national championships, 15 all-American nods and 15 ACC championships.
The team’s performance is the fastest by an ACC program since 2012 and places the Yellow Jackets fifth on the top-10 list by school behind only Texas A&M, LSU, Illinois and Clemson. Nationally, the 53.16 time is the fastest time recorded since LSU in April 2017.
A breakneck weekend for the conference, for the first time in the history of the league, all five recipients of the weekly awards recorded the No. 1 marks nationally in each of their respective events.
The Yellow Jackets return to action next weekend with the Spec Towns Invitational in Athens, Ga., on Saturday, April 7.
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