Ninth-Ranked Harris Set To Battle Pentathlon Field At NCAA Indoor Championships
STARKVILLE, Miss. ? Mississippi State junior Marrissa Harris will compete in the pentathlon at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Fayetteville, Ark. on Saturday, March 15, on the campus on the University of Arkansas. The event is being held at the Randal Tyson Indoor Track Facility.
The Memphis-native enters the championship ranked ninth in the country in the event after a record-setting performance at last weekend’s SEC Indoor Championships. Harris tallied a school-record and personal-best 4,044 points to finish runner-up.
Harris is the first pentathlete from Mississippi State to compete at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships. She joins the elite class of Elisha Williams (long jump), Tiffany McWilliams (mile run) and Jennifer McPherson (mile run) as the only Lady Bulldogs to move on to the national stage. Harris is the only MState female multi-event athlete to compete at indoor or outdoor postseason action.
Harris is one of two Southeastern Conference athletes competing in the event. She accompanies Arkansas’s Etienne Chaplin, who edged Harris in the 800-meter run portion of the pentathlon to take the SEC pentathlon title.
During pentathlon competition, Harris rewrote the MSU history book by breaking the 60-meter hurdle record that she previously set the weekend before at the Tyson Invitational. Harris completed the 60-meter hurdles in 8.37 seconds, while notching a NCAA provisional qualifying mark. The Central High alumna also soared a personal-best 5 feet, seven and three-fourth inches in the high jump, where she took second place, bettering her fourth place mark on the all-time indoor high jump superlative list.
Harris finished off the SEC Indoor Championships, setting another personal mark in the long jump, propelling herself 20-02 ?. Not only did she pick up an additional NCAA provisional qualifying mark, the jump moved her into second all-time in the indoor long jump.
The NCAA Championships will be streamed live on the internet by visiting the NCAA Championships webpage on ladybacks.com.