Former NC A&T sprinter Kayla White beat Sha’Carri Richardson in the 200 meters at the inaugural Botswana Grand Prix on April 29.
White upset Richardson to win the World Gold Tour with a time of 22.38 seconds. Richardson clocked 22.54 seconds with Egyptian sprinter Basant Hemida coming in third at 22.57 seconds. See video of the race here.
White, 26, won the NCAA indoor 200 meter championship in 2019. It was the first national title for the NC A&T track program. Later that year, she won the NCAA Division I Women’s Indoor Track Athlete of the Year, The United States Track and Field Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCA).presents the award.
For her career, she won 17 MEAC indoor and outdoor sprinting and hurdles titles at A&T (2016-19).
Now sponsored by Nike, White ran her best 200 time of 22.18 in the 2022 U.S. Outdoor Championships, finishing third. She is now perhaps exhibiting the best form of her professional career.
Kayla White’s resume
White, a Miami, Florida native secured her first career win at the 2016 MEAC indoor championships. She won the 60-meter hurdles title in 8.39 seconds. In the same season, she won her first outdoor MEAC championship in the 100 meter hurdles and doubled with a win in the 4×100 relay.
She went on to win the MEAC 60 meter indoor hurdles and the outdoor 100 meter hurdles crowns in each of her four years running for the Aggies. White added MEAC 4×100 relay titles in 2017, ’18 and ’19 and won 100 and 200 meter championships in her junior (2018) and senior (2019) seasons.
In the 2019 NCAA Indoor 60 meter hurdles, White finished second. She also finished second in the NCAA outdoor 100 meter championship.
She is listed as a volunteer assistant at Tennessee under former NC A&T head track & field coach Duane Ross.
The Richardson saga
Richardson is the former outstanding LSU sprinter who turned pro after a sterling freshman season with the Tigers.
Richardson is on a comeback after her debacle following the 2020 U. S. Olympic Trials. She was declared ineligible for the 2020 Summer Olympics after testing positive for cannibus use. Richardson had won the 100 meters in 10.86 seconds at the Trials.
She ran a new personal best of 10.72 seconds in the 100 meters in April 2021. It made her the the sixth fastest woman of all time and the fourth fastest American woman of all time. Richardson successfully completed a counseling program and accepted a one-month period of ineligibility that began on June 28, 2021.