PUEBLO, Col. – Sean Dixon put his name in Oklahoma Baptist University lore when he secured the first D2 national championship in track and field when he won the 400-meter hurdles at the NCAA Division II Outdoor Track and Field Championships this past weekend.
Since joining the Division II ranks in 2016, no Bison track team or student-athlete before Dixon, a senior from Jacksonville, Fla., had ever won a national title on Bison Hill.
Dixon won the race in 49.54, a personal-best and just three, one-hundredths of a second away from the 2005 OBU record set by Pat Brown (49.51).
There were a host of other top finishes for the Bison.
Valerie Olson secured First Team All-American honors when she placed third in the heptathlon with 5,548 points, a personal-best. Among seven performances, her time in the 200-meter dash (23.56) is the fastest time ever ran in D2 in that event.
Her husband,
Evan Olson, also secured All-American honors in the javelin throw. He reached 66.68 meters, which was good for eighth place.
Asia Foster and
Jamora Horace had outstanding performances too. In the 400-meter dash, Foster secured seventh place, which made her First Team All-American, with a time of 53.33. In the high jump competition, Horace placed sixth with a jump of 1.76m (5-9.25), another first team national accolade.
Lastly, the 4x400 relay team of
Kimberly McKinney,
Mary McKey, Foster and Olson garnered Second Team All-American honors when they took 11
th place in 3:37.43
By meet's end, the Bison men finished in 20th place, a program-best in the D2 ERA, while the women were slotted 25th. Also of note, this was the biggest group of participants the Bison sent to the national meet in the Division II era. In total, 11 student-athletes qualified for the outdoor nationals championship.
