AUGUSTA, Ga. - The Paine College Lady Lions will travel to Kingsville, Texas to compete at the NCAA Division II Track and Field Championships. Sophomore Chayla Hobbs, Junior Yasmine Reynolds, Junior Jharna Alston, Freshman Jakaela Dungee and Freshmen Destiny Walker will all be representing Augusta's very own HBCU in the 4x100m relay and the women's open 100m dash. Alston will be the lone Lady Lion to compete in the 100m dash. The prelims for these events will begin on Thursday, May 23 and the finals will be held on Saturday, May 25 on the campus of Texas A&M Kingsville.

The Lady Lions used the last qualifying meet at Mount Olive University on May 12th to meet the qualifying standards with a relay time of 46.04 and with Alston coming back  a little over an hour later to run a personal best of 11.68 seconds in the 100m dash. It was her third time during the weekend running a national qualifying time in this event. Reynolds also qualified provisionally in the 100m with 11.89 and in the 200m with a time of 24.17. Unfortunately the times did not qualify her for the national championship with her 200m time missing the qualification by 1 spot.

The Lady Lions are a small but significant reason for the most success the program has had in its history. The ladies broke 12 school records this year alone on their way to not only qualifying for nationals but finish in the top 3 for the first time in school history tallying 111.5 points at the SIAC Championships. They were able to capture 5 out of the 6 conference championship titles while adding four top three finishes. Out of the 111.5 points the group tallied 76.5 of the points.
    
Contributing to the teams success is assistant coach Antoine Thomas. He has been a tremendous addition to the program. He brings in a wealth of experience coaching his alma mater (Albany State University) from 2010 until 2018. "I would like to thank God and  Paine College for the opportunity to coach these wonderful student athletes and put the school on a national level, this is only the beginning we will continue to build the program and make it a perennial powerhouse on the D2 level." says coach Thomas.

"For me as a head coach this has been a very rewarding season. Even though we have only scratched the surface we have made a tremendous improvement with the program this season. The goal was to use this season to get prepared to make a huge splash during the 2020 National Championships. I believe we are on our way. We would like to contend with the national powerhouses in Division II. These ladies have the ability of beginning a long successful tradition of national champions. The support of the Paine College faculty and staff, especially president Dr. Hardee and the athletic director Selina Kohn, has been great and I am proud that we can add some positive light onto an institution that has the opportunity to be extremely successful for years to come."