MOBILE, Ala. — South Alabama track and field athletes Kaitlyn Beans and Renaldo Frechou will travel to Eugene, Ore., this week to compete at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Championships, where both will have a chance to earn All-America honors in their first seasons with the Jaguars.
The NCAA Outdoor Championships are scheduled for June 11-14.
Beans Makes History in the Jumps
Beans, a freshman, is the first athlete in South Alabama history, men’s or women’s, to qualify for the national championships in any of the four jumping events: the long jump, triple jump, high jump and pole vault. She is also the first Jaguar freshman to reach the NCAA finals.
She earned her spot by placing seventh in the women’s triple jump at the NCAA East Preliminary Championships.
Beans had not competed in the triple jump before arriving at South Alabama. She was a three-sport athlete at Brewbaker Technology High School in Montgomery, Ala.
At the Sun Belt Conference Championships, Beans won the triple jump with a mark of 13.19 meters. The jump broke the school record by more than four-tenths of a meter and improved her personal best by more than seven-tenths of a meter.
Frechou Rewrites Hammer Record Book
Frechou, a sophomore from Paarl, South Africa, set the South Alabama record in the men’s hammer throw in his first meet with the Jaguars at the Jaguar Opener in March, becoming the first athlete in program history to throw beyond 60 meters.
He broke his own school record five more times during the season. Frechou threw 64.36 meters at the East Preliminary Championships and finished in the top five in every competition this season before the regional meet.
Chasing All-America Honors
A top-eight finish in their events would make Beans and Frechou All-Americans. Five South Alabama athletes have earned All-America honors in track and field: David Kimani (2000), Tonny Okello (2006, 2007) and Vincent Rono (2006, 2007) on the men’s side, and Adjoke Odumosu (2007) and Lindsay Schwartz (2011, 2012) on the women’s side.
