Higginbotham Tabbed OAC Men's Track Athlete of the Week

The Ohio Athletic Conference has named junior sprinter/jumper Julius Higginbotham (Elyria, Ohio / Elyria) of the Heidelberg men’s track and field team as the men’s track athlete of the week for the week of January 12, 2009. It is the first award handed out for the 2009 indoor season.
 
For his career, Higginbotham is picking up his fifth athlete of the week honor, combining both indoor and outdoor track and field. He has been named the field athlete of the week three times and track athlete of the week twice.
 
Over the weekend, Heidelberg took home runner-up honors at the seven-team Mike Hout Invitational hosted by Capital University. Higginbotham led the way with two provisionally-qualifying marks for the 2009 NCAA Division III Championships hosted by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, March 13-14. Higginbotham is coming off a sophomore campaign in which he qualified for the indoor nationals in the long jump.
 
Higginbotham raced to a provisional mark of 6.95 in the preliminaries of the 60-meter dash. He returned in the finals to take third place in a time of 6.98. Also on the track, Higginbotham finished third in the 200-meter dash, crossing the finish line in 23.78. He teamed up to run a leg of the 4x200-meter relay as well. The relay team took home third place in a time of 1:33.94.
 
Prior to his success on the track on Saturday, Higginbotham leaped to the long jump championship. Higginbotham not only won the title, but provisionally-qualified in the event for nationals with a leap of 23’3.25”.