A combined 16 individual Horizon League Championships helped senior track and field runner Ciara Jarrett and senior track and field thrower Bobby Grace earn the honor of being named YSU/The Vindicator Athletes of the Year for 2013-14. They will receive their awards as YSU Athletics hosts its annual Scholar-Athlete this evening at the Chestnut Room in Kilcawley Center.
The event salutes the outstanding academic achievements of YSU student-athletes while recognizing individuals, families and organzations that have endowed a scholarship with the Athletic Department.
Student-athletes with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.00 or higher as well as those who receive a scholarship endowment are invited to attend the event pending their class schedule. A crowd of nearly 400 is expected be in attendance.
Former YSU running back Torrian Pace will serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the evenings festivities. Various Horizon League and YSU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee leadership awards will be presented.
The banquet is set to begin at 6 p.m.
More on this year's honorees:
Jarrett, a senior from Milwaukee, Wis., is the first YSU indoor track and field athlete to win four consecutive titles in the same event as she won all four Horizon League indoor crowns in the 200-meter dash during her impressive running and jumping career.
The YSU/Vindicator Female Athlete of the Year, she is a 10-time individual conference champion in her career from 2011-2014. Jarrett won the 200-meter indoor title in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, took home the outdoor 200m crowns in 2011, 2012 and 2013, won the 100-meter dash outdoor title in 2011 and 2012 and won her first-ever long jump crown at the 2013 HL Indoor Championships.
She is the conference record holder in both the outdoor and indoor 200-meter events.
At the indoor Horizon League Championships this year, she won the 200-meter dash with a time of 24.61 seconds, winning by .16 seconds. In the long jump she had a leap of 5.78 meters to claim the crown. She was also was third in the 60-meter dash by .01 seconds at 7.64. The women's team ran away with the Horizon League title as Jarrett contributed 26 points as an individual and was part of the 4x400 relay group that was second.
Grace, a senior from Cleveland, placed third at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in March. It was an impressive feat for Grace, who is the YSU/Vindicator Male Athlete of the Year. Grace, who has won six individual Horizon League titles, looks to add to his career awards haul this weekend when the Penguins play host to the Horizon League Outdoor Championships.
Grace has already thrown a distance to put him in the NCAA Prelims to keep his hopes of another outstanding finish at the Outdoor NCAA Championships, which will be in June. He set a school record in the shot put with a toss of 19.56m on April 19 at the Jesse Owens Classic held in Columbus. That distance is the seventh best in the country this year.
On March 15 at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships in Albuquerque, N.M., he had a heave of 19.90 meters (65-3.5 feet) on his fifth attempt in the finals to place third behind Texas’s Ryan Crouser and Stephen Mozia of Cornell. The throw gave Grace the distinction of being just the second All-American in school history. With the toss, he smashed his own school record and personal best by .28 meters. Four of his tosses in the finals were 19.23m or longer. Two weeks prior, Grace won the Indoor Horizon League shot put crown with a toss of 19.13 meters which destroyed the conference mark of 17.62m.
