Missouri’s Kearsten Peoples wins NCAA indoor women’s weight throw title

Missouri senior Kearsten Peoples became the third women’s indoor national champion in program history at the NCAA indoor track and field national championships this weekend in Fayetteville, Ark.

Peoples won the women’s weight throw Friday with a mark of 74 feet, 6 1/4 inches — 5 inches farther than runner-up Ida Storm of UCLA.

“It was so amazing …,” Peoples said. “It’s a little bit overwhelming, but also crazy and so cool.”

Peoples took the lead on her third throw, which skimmed the net on her release. That gave her confidence even after Storm retook the lead on the first throw in the final.

“I’ve competed against a lot of these girls before and I knew that I could beat them, so I just treated it like any other meet,” Peoples said. “I knew I had a chance to do something great, and it kind of just happened.”

Peoples joined 1989 400-meter champion Natasha Kaiser-Brown and the 2001 distance-medley relay team as the only women’s indoor national champion in program history.

“It hasn’t sunk in yet, because I was trying to focus on shot put today … but, probably once I leave the track and we start our drive home, it will sink in for sure,” Peoples said.

Peoples finished 10th in the shot put on Saturday, but fellow Tigers senior Jill Rushin won All-American honors with a fifth-place finish in the event.

“We have a thing where we say ‘no meet is a big meet,’ but just being down here in this atmosphere was nice,” Rushin said. “Today’s meet was one of the best I’ve ever been around for the women’s shot put. The crowd was in it, and we were catapulting off each other.”

Rushin technically tied for fourth after a shot put of 56-7 1/4, but Wisconsin junior Kelsey Card had the better second mark, bumping Rushin to fifth.

Southern Illinois freshman Raven Saunders won the meet with a mark of 61-1 1/4.

Peoples, an Ottawa (Kan.) graduate, is now an eight-time All-American thrower for the Tigers.

She is a three-time outdoor All-American in the shot put and was an All-American outdoors in the discus in 2012.

Peoples also is a two-time indoor All-American in both the shot put and weight throw.

Rushin, a Jackson, Mo., native, is a three-time All-American, including back-to-back indoor shot-put honors. She also was a shot-put All-American outdoors last summer.

Missouri junior Markesh Woodson also received All-American honors with a fifth-place finish in the men’s 60-meter dash.

“I feel pretty good coming back from a year of injury,” said Woodson, a Colorado Springs native who qualified for indoor nationals as a freshman and sophomore but did not compete last year with a strained hamstring.

His time was 6.611 seconds in the final after qualifying seventh from the preliminaries in 6.598.

“I felt like I could pick off a couple guys in the final and actually felt like I could win it,” said Woodson, who is now a two-time indoor All-American and also an outdoor All-American in the 100.

This story was originally published March 14, 2015 at 7:25 AM with the headline "Missouri’s Kearsten Peoples wins NCAA indoor women’s weight throw title."