Courtesy of Norfolk State Athletic Communications


NORFOLK, Va. – When the spring sports season was shut down, it marked the end of a decade of Norfolk State athletics. From the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2020, it was a 10-year stretch that saw countless highlights across NSU's 15 total sports. Many of those programs' greatest achievements – since NSU made the jump to NCAA Division I in 1997 – came during this decade.
 
Over the course of the next few months, we are going to spotlight those storylines right here on NSUSpartans.com. Every week, we'll choose a different sport(s) and take you down memory lane before we get set to start a new decade of excellence. In addition, head over to our Twitter page (@NSUSpartans) where fans will have the opportunity to vote for what they think is the greatest highlight per sport. At the end, they will also be able to vote for the greatest overall highlight in NSU athletics during the past 10 years.
 
Up first, we kick things off with women's indoor and outdoor track & field. We've narrowed it down to five storylines from the past decade that we'll focus on, in no particular order.
 
A.) It had been since 2004 since Norfolk State last had a first-team All-American on the women's track and field side. In 2018, sophomore Martha Bissah put an end to that as she took off in the 800 meters that season. Her 2018 campaign culminated with a sixth-place finish at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. She followed that up a year later by placing fifth in the 800 at the NCAA Indoor Championships, again earning first-team All-America honors. She was also ninth at the Outdoor Championships in 2019 for second-team accolades. She joined Debbie Dunn as the only NSU women's track and field athlete in the Division I era to advance to an NCAA event final twice in her career.
Read more about Bissah: 2018 NCAA Outdoor Championships | 2019 Indoor Championships
 
B.) Kiara Howell was a force to be reckoned with at every MEAC Outdoor Track and Field Championship meet. Each of her first three years at NSU, she captured the Most Outstanding Field Athlete Award, given to the athlete who accumulates the most points in the field events. She shared the award in 2013 as a freshman thanks to second-place finishes in the javelin and discus. She then won it outright in 2014, placing second in the javelin and discus and third in the shot put, and again in 2015, this time winning both the javelin and discus. She did not win it a fourth time in 2016 despite finishing second in the javelin and discus once again at the MEAC outdoor meet. No matter. Howell shared the award at the indoor meet that year for her fourth overall MEAC Most Outstanding Field Athlete award.
Read more about Howell: 2013 MEAC Outdoor Championships | 2014 Outdoors | 2015 Outdoors | 2016 Indoors
 
C.) The Spartan women started the decade off right. They edged Hampton by just one point to win the 2011 MEAC Outdoor Championship, breaking the Pirates' five-year stranglehold on the title. It was NSU's first outdoor title since 2001 and its fourth overall MEAC title counting indoor titles in 2000 and 2010. NSU was led by MEAC Most Outstanding Track Athlete Shanneka Claiborne, who won the 100 and 200 and anchored the 4x100 relay team to a gold medal in 2011. Although the title was vacated several years later by the NCAA, at the time it marked a significant moment for the Spartans.
Read more about the 2011 MEAC Outdoor Championships
 
D.) Bissah was not the only athlete to make noise at a national meet. One year after her first first-team All-America honor, sophomore Kiara Grant did the same in 2019. At the outdoor meet, Grant placed sixth in the 100 meters, capping a season in which she set the school and Jamaican junior national records in the event. She ran a personal-best 11.04 in the NCAA final for that sixth-place showing, which came on the heels of a 14^th-place finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 60 meters. Grant joined Dunn in 2000, Tianna Goldring in 2004, and Bissah in both 2018 and '19 as the only NSU female track and field athlete to earn first-team All-America honors in the D-I era.
Read more about Kiara Grant at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Championships
 
E.) Speaking of Bissah, she gave NSU another three-peat much like Howell did earlier in the decade, albeit just not three in a row. Bissah won the MEAC Most Outstanding Track Athlete award at three different MEAC Indoor Championship meets. She did it first as a freshman in 2017, winning the 800, mile and 3,000 meters while also helping the NSU distance medley relay team finish first. Rinse and repeat in 2018 and 2020, as she won golds in the three individual events and with the DMR team both of those years as well. The only year she did not win the award was in 2019, when she won gold again in the 800 and mile but did not compete in the 3,000. Altogether, Bissah won 16 MEAC gold medals out of 17 individual races. She went 11-for-11 in indoor events, and 5-of-6 in outdoor events after winning the 800 her first three years and the 1,500 her sophomore and junior seasons. Only a second-place finish in the 1,500 her freshman year kept Bissah from a perfect gold record.

Read more about Bissah: 2017 MEAC Indoor Championships | 2019 Indoors | 2020 Indoors
 
Those are just but a few of the highlights from women's track & field this decade. Be sure to check our Twitter @NSUSpartans to vote for your favorite each and every week. Next week we'll be back with football's greatest storylines.