LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – After exclusive voting by the head coaches of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), the league office today announced its 2021 Women’s Outdoor Track & Field postseason awards.
Jordyn White of Trinity University earned Field Athlete-of-the-Year honors, while Jackie Mora of Texas Lutheran University was selected as the Women’s Track Athlete-of-the-Year.
Mora and Ellie Catron of Trinity split the coaches' vote to share Newcomer-of-the-Year honors, and the Trinity coaching staff rounded out the awards, earning Women’s Staff-of-the-Year.
The all-conference team is determined by performance at the conference championship meet where the top three finishers in each event are recognized as All-SCAC. Complete All-SCAC Women's Track & Field Team
White, a sophomore from St. Louis, Mo., was named the Women's Athlete of the Meet after she won the 100 meter hurdles, took second in the 100 meter dash, long jump, triple jump, and third in the 200 meter dash at the 2021 SCAC Championships. She was also a member of the winning 4X100 meter relay and totaled 42.5 points in becoming the first Trinity student-athlete to be named Women's Athlete of the Meet since Bailey Drury in 2015. Following the conference meet, White posted a school-record 5.92m long jump at the Gregory Invitational, placing her third nationally and qualifying her for the NCAA Division III Championships. At the national meet, White finished in eighth place with a 5.53m leap, earning the sophomore All American honors, the first Trinity student-athlete to earn AA honors in the long jump in program history. She followed up her USTFCCCA All-Region selection with being named the South/Southeast Region Athlete-of-the-Year.
White's selection marks the sixth time a Trinity student-athlete has earned SCAC Field Athlete-of-the-Year honors and the first since Britney Sullivan in 2018.
Mora, a first-year from Brownsville, Texas, scored 24.5 points at the SCAC Championships by winning both the 200 and the 400 meters in times of 25.41 and 59.41, respectively, and anchored both the 4x1 and the 4x4 relay teams. TLU won the 4x400 with a time of 4:06.02. Her top times in the 200 (25.41) and 400 (59.17) ranked as the ninth- and 11th-best times, respectively, in those events in the South/Southeast Region.
A two-time SCAC Track Athlete-of-the-Week during the 2021 outdoor season, Mora is the third different Texas Lutheran athlete to be named SCAC Women’s Track Athlete-of-the-Year, joining Vanecia Spencer in 2014 and Ashley Rynard in 2018 as former Bulldog honorees.
Mora earned a share of Newcomer-of-the-Year honors, the fourth consecutive TLU student-athlete to win or share the award. Rynard earned the honor in 2017 while current teammates Dejah Carr and Tia Hart were named the league's top newcomer in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Trinity's Catron, a first-year from The Woodlands, Texas, also earned a share of the Newcomer-of-the-Year award. She won the 3000-meter steeplechase at the SCAC Championships (11:44.96) and ran a personal best of 11:15.49 during her inaugural campaign - a time that ranked her 28th in the country (the second-best time for any true freshmen in the country). Catron also took second in the 1,500 meters at the SCAC Championship with a time of 4:52.44.
Catron is the third Trinity student-athlete to win or share the Newcomer-of-the-Year honor, following Nkolika Nweke (2015) and Bailey Drury (2013).
Finally, the SCAC Women’s Track & Field Staff of the Year honor went to the Trinity staff after another strong season which culminated in the Tigers winning the SCAC women’s track & field championship for the sixth consecutive year. Trinity defeated second place TLU by 138 points - the second-largest margin of victory in the history of the championships. Led by eighth-year Head Coach Marcus Whitehead, the award marks the sixth-straight year he and his assistant coaches were honored as the SCAC Women’s Staff of the Year. The Tiger women won 12 individual events and one relay at the 2021 conference championship meet and led the way among conference programs as TU accounted for three of the league’s seven All-South/Southeast Region performers on the women’s side.
