University School of Nashville Girls
First In School History
When we ran our virtual meet a month before the championship, the USN girls had a healthy lead in their projection of 103.5 points to Harding's 70.5. Senior Morayo Kassim accounted for 20 of those points as she was ranked #1 in both short sprints and most definitely factored into the 21 points USN was projected to score in relays in our tabulations. Unfortunately, she sustained a season ended injury moments before the Middle Region Championship. It was a massive blow to the Tigers title prospects but they ultimately prevailed flipping the script on the Harding Lions who beat them last season.
| USN | Harding | |
| Event Wins | 3 | 2 |
| Events w/ Multiple Scorers | 0 | 4 |
| Total Events Scored | 11 | 8 |
| Total Points | 83 | 64 |
Now, you may look at that table on the surface and think "how did Harding not win?" or "how was it not closer?" but you have to look a little closer at the details to really see where USN separated themselves from the Lions. Here's ultimately the stat that matters.
| Finishers in the Top 3 | |
| USN | 9 |
| Harding | 5 |
Almost every time a Tiger competed they were scoring 6 or more points compared to Harding who was only scoring that many from less than half of their opportunities. One of those performances that ultimately locked up the team title for USN was from Morayo's younger sister Alima Kassim who, after finishing runner up to older sister in 2021 in the 200m dash, kept the title in the family in 2022.
Last season in their runner up effort, the Tigers only scored 3 points in events involving distances over 400 meters. On May 25th they scored 24 points in that same category. Auldyn Plant placed 3rd in the both the 1600m and 3200m runs while running legs on the 4x800m (and 4x400m) while Olivia Jelsma placed 2nd in the 800m (while also contributing in the Heptathlon and 4x200m). Coach Bachman point to those performances here.
The team will return a lot of these same key players in 2023. Congratulations to the University of Nashville Tigers.