DEKALB, Ill. – The Northern Illinois University women's track and field team will compete in the Mid-American Conference Outdoor Championships this Thursday through Saturday, May 14-16, in Muncie, Ind. Action begins at 9 a.m. CT on Thursday and Friday before starting at 8 a.m. CT on Saturday at Ball State's Briner Sports Complex. 

"With the training we have done the last three weeks since Baylor we have seen some great improvements from our student-athletes," said NIU Director of Track and Field Connie Teaberry. "Especially at our home meet, they really put things together, executed greatly and we walked away from that with several PRs, season's bests and top-10 for the program. It's going to be exciting to see how those performances carryover into the MAC Championships, right now I think we are ready to do some great things."

Among the finals scheduled for Thursday's opening day of the meet is the javelin, where G'Nea Pitt (Spanish Town, Jamaica) heads to the conference meet with the MAC's ninth-best mark, a throw of 40.32 meters (132-03). 

In the long jump, slated to take place on Friday, Precious Umukoro (Villarreal, Spain) has the sixth-best mark in the conference this spring at 6.03 meters (19-09.50). Long jump is one of two events in which Umukoro is ranked in the top-10 in the MAC as she also goes into Saturday's triple jump with the ninth-best mark in the conference at 12.52 meters (41-01.00).

Aniya Barton (Lansing, Ill./Thornton Fractional South) is 14th in the MAC in the triple jump with a mark of 12.08 meters (39-07.75) set just last week at home in the Huskie Classic.

The high jump will also take place on Saturday where two Huskies are ranked in the top-10, led by Jasmijn Raes (Amsterdam, Netherlands), who has won four high jump competitions this spring. She is ranked fifth with a best mark of 1.74 meters (5-08.50) this season. Arianna Calloway (Blue Springs, Mo./Blue Springs) won the MAC Indoor high jump title this season and comes into the outdoor championship ranked 10th in the conference. 

On the track, the Huskies have a pair of top-20 performers in the 100 meters in Natasha Chetty (Victoria, Seychelles) who is 18th and Esther Momalife (Lagos, Nigeria) who is tied for 19th, as well as the 100-meter hurdles where Brooke Jordan (Hephzibah, Ga./Cross Creek) is ranked 12th and Miashlie Jean (Fort Lauderdale, Fla./Northeast) is tied for 19th.

"It is bittersweet that this is our last MAC Championship because of the people we work with at the MAC, they are all so great and accommodating," said Teaberry. "The coaches in the MAC are great coaches and great people, so that part I am going to miss tremendously. We are looking to do some good things this weekend in our final MAC Championship."

Action from all three days of the championship will be streamed live on ESPN+. Thursday's coverage is scheduled to begin at 4:15 p.m. CT, Friday's coverage is scheduled to start at 3 p.m. CT and Saturday's final day of coverage is slated for 10 a.m. CT.