A sensational performance at the Southland Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships last week has earned Kalen Beavers high honors.
Beavers, a junior sprinter from Carencro, was voted both the men’s track performer of the year, and the overall men’s athlete of the year, by SLC coaches.
On the final day of competition in Birmingham, he won both the 60 and 200-meter dashes.
In the men’s 60, he ran a 6.71. He followed that up with a blistering 200 time of 21.05 to complete his double, which earned him the SLC Indoor Championship Men’s MVP selected at the meet. Coaches chose the additional honors in voting this week.
ATAMAH WINS SLC WEEKLY AWARD: After averaging 26 points and 11 rebounds per game in three victories, NSU women’s basketball star Vernell “Vee” Atamah took home the final Southland Conference Player of the Week award Wednesday.
It is the third conference weekly award she’s won this season.
In the regular season finale Tuesday, she scored 31 points and grabbed 14 rebounds in an 81-65 win over New Orleans, eclipsing the 1,000-point mark in the process. She is the second youngest and fourth fastest player in program history to accomplish it.
To start the week, she scored 26 points and grabbed eight rebounds in a monster road overtime victory against UTRGV. She scored 11 points in the final 16 minutes to help lead the Demons to the comeback victory, including scoring the final three points of the game.
She buried a pair of free throws with 15 seconds left to put the Demons in front by two possessions.
In the middle game on the road against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, she scored 12 of her 20 points in the third quarter, including making back-to-back-to-back 3-pointers to finish the third quarter and bust the game wide open.
Atamah’s 579 points this season are tied for the sixth most in program history. Her scoring averages of 19.3 in all games and 19.0 points per game during SLC play both lead the league.
She has made 87 3-pointers this season, which is second in program history for a single season, only one behind Beatrice Attura’s total of 88 in 2016-17.
In addition to her scoring prowess, the sophomore forward hauls down eight rebounds per game during league play, which ranks third in the league.
Next up for Atamah and her teammates is the SLC Tournament, which begins for NSU’s women on Monday, as the fifth-seeded Demons take on eighth-seeded East Texas A&M at 11 a.m. in Lake Charles.
