CHENNAI: IN a first, Chennai's Krishna Jayasankar becomes the first woman from India to qualify for the United States' National Collegiate Athletics Association's (NCAA) Outdoor Championships, set to happen at Eugene, Oregon on June 14.
The 22-year old earned qualification with a throw of 55.61metres in the NCAA's west conference's first round of qualifying which took place at Austin, Texas on Saturday. That put her amongst the top 12, which in turn earned her a qualification berth in the collegiate meet in Eugene. She currently is a junior student at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
Krishna, who is the daughter of Indian basketball players C Jayasankar Menon and Prasanna Jayasankar, earlier studied at the SBOA school and junior college in Chennai. She had won national-level medals in both shot put and discus throw.
After meeting Jamaican track-and-field coach Michael Wessel at Tenvic Sports in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, Krishna moved to Jamaica with him to train, during the lockdown.
In 2021, she became the first Indian thrower to be offered an academic and athletic scholarship from the University of Texas at El Paso.
In March this year, she set the national record for the indoor shot put, with a throw of 16.03m in the Mountain West Indoor track and field championship in Albuquerque, New Mexico.