ATHENS, Ga. – Jumpers Kendall Ward and Adaora Tagbo continued their march up the ACC performance list with superb performances on the final day of the Spec Towns Invitational on Saturday afternoon.
Ward had begun the outdoor season with two 1.67m marks in the high jump and was inching to break through. She cleared the 1.66m and 1.71m marks with ease, needing just two jumps to capture her first 1.70m+ clearance since her third-place finish at the ACC Indoor Championships.
The junior faced the 1.76m height and soared over the mark on her first attempt. 1.76m is her highest clearance in nearly a year since her 1.79m jump in the 2025 NCAA East First Round, also surpassing her 2025 NCAA Outdoor Championships effort at 1.75m.
She set her first ACC standard mark of the spring and will sit tied for second on the 2026 ACC Outdoor performance list and break into the national top-50 list.
Across the infield, Tagbo faulted on her first jump before landing at 11.73m. Emerging as one of the conference’s most consistent triple jumpers, she flew on her third effort and crashed into the pit at 12.56m for her best jump of the season. She finished out the remaining three attempts with the 12.56m mark standing as her best.
Tagbo recorded her fourth ACC standard mark of the outdoor season, crushing the standard in all four appearances. The sophomore moves up into a tie for 12th overall in the conference.
On the oval, Kennedy Myers used a 13.93 time in the 100m hurdles prelim to qualify into the nine-man final race. She raced out to a sub-14 second mark for the third time in four appearances before finishing sixth overall in the final at 14.08.
Jade Ofotan recorded back-to-back times under the 11.70 time in the 100m as she crossed the line at 11.65 as the highest ACC finisher in the event.
Georgia Tech will return home to host its annual Georgia Tech Invitational from Friday, April 17 through Saturday, April 18. Full details on the meet including the information sheet and tentative schedule, are available here.
Full Steam Ahead
Full Steam Ahead is a $500 million fundraising initiative to achieve Georgia Tech athletics’ goal of competing for championships at the highest level in the next era of intercollegiate athletics. The initiative will fund transformative projects for Tech athletics, including renovations of Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (the historic home of Georgia Tech football), the Zelnak Basketball Center (the practice and training facility for Tech basketball) and O’Keefe Gymnasium (the venerable home of Yellow Jackets volleyball), as well as additional projects and initiatives to further advance Georgia Tech athletics through program wide-operational support. All members of the Georgia Tech community are invited to visit atfund.org/FullSteamAhead for full details and renderings of the renovation projects, as well as to learn about opportunities to contribute online.
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