FIRST AMERICAN BANK NEWS-SUN ATHLETE OF THE WEEK

The New Mexico Junior College women's indoor track & field team might have won the national championship without Flomena Asekol, but the freshman from Kenya made sure there was no doubt as NMJC won its third indoor track & field national championship in four year.

Asekol took home three individual first place finishes and a team one. The freshman won the 800-meter run, the 1,000-meter run, and the one-mile run. She also ran anchor for the distance medley relay team that took first place. In all, she was responsible for 32.5 of NMJC's 160 points. She scored more points than 22 other teams had and more than the bottom 11 teams in the standings combined.

In the 800, Asekol finished with a time of 2 minutes 12.87 seconds. She beat out Monroe College's Joanna Archer by just over one second.

Her closest race of the meet was in the 1,000 where she took first with a time of 2:56.43, finishing ahead of the second place runner (2:56.83) by not even half a second.

Asekol had her biggest margin of victory in the 0ne-mile run, winning the event with a time of 4:52.69 while the second place runner finished in 4:56.60.

In the distance medley relay, Asekol and the Lady T-Birds won by nearly 20 seconds, running a 11 minutes and 56.50 seconds. Iowa Central, which took second in the event, had a time of 12 minutes and 16 seconds.