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March 11, 2003
Virginia’s Kiamesha Otey and Eliese Mitchell have both qualified for the 2003 NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championships, which will take place in Fayetteville, Ark. on March 14-15. Both Otey and Mitchell qualified for the meet in 2002, where Otey earned All-American honors with a fifth-place finish in the long jump.
This year Otey will compete in both the 60-meter dash and the long jump. Otey is fresh off her national title at the USA Track and Field Championships held in Boston March 2-3. She is the first women’s national champion at Virginia since 1982 when Lesley Welch won the NCAA and TAC cross country titles. Otey also won the ACC title in the long jump, her second consecutive conference championship in that event. Otey led the ACC in the long jump and the 60-meter and 200-meter dashes in 2003, taking the silver at the ACC meet in both dashes.
Eliese Mitchell holds three school records, having set the shot put record in 2003 to go along with her hammer and weight throw records. Mitchell took third in the weight throw at the ACC Championships, but she bettered her mark in that event two weeks later by over a meter en route to taking fourth at the Alex Wilson Invitational in South Bend.
Otey competes in the long jump at 4:00 pm on Friday, March 14 and runs in the preliminaries of the 60-meter dash 5:45 pm the same night. Mitchell competes at 2:00 pm on Saturday, March 15.