Janet Amponsah wins 4th NJCAA Athlete of the Week award

Janet Amponsah has won her 4 NJCAA Athlete of the Week award after her outstanding performances last week where she clinched qualification to the IAAF World Championships with personal bests of 11.29 (100m) and 23.04 (200m).

After recording some impressive performances over the past weeks, most of which were deemed illegal due to the brisk following wind, Janet returned with aplomb running back to back qualification times for the IAAF World Championships at the West Texas A&M Twilight event.

Most notably, her time of 11.29 secs in the 100m surpasses the 2016 Rio Olympic Games qualifying standard set by IAAF. It moves her to the no. 2 ranking in Africa (the fastest being 11.28s), and to no. 25 in the World ranking.

The Western Texas sprinter’s 200m time of 23.04 secs ranks her as Africa's current no. 1, and no. 28 in the world and is superior to the qualifying standard set for next year's Rio Olympic Games.

The National Athlete of the Week is an award presented by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association at the beginning of each week to eight collegiate track & field athletes who excelled the previous week.

The citation from the USTFCCCA read: “With only a few weekends of regular season competition left, Amponsah is an extremely impressive ninth on the all-college list for 200 meters.

“She won the West Texas A&M Twilight in 23.04 seconds, a new PB by 0.01 seconds and the fastest NJCAA time this year–even after converting it to 23.11 for altitude.

“The WTAMU track has been kind to Amponsah, as she set her old PB of 23.05 there fifty-three weeks ago. She’s a four-time national champion and currently the NJCAA leader in the 100 and 200 meters,” the statement ended.