First published in the Baylor Insider Magazine from the Baylor Bear Foundation
  By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Even before Facebook and Instagram opened up the world to everyone else, Ben Dalton was traveling to the ends of the earth "to find the best athletes we could."

            "I love to travel, I love new cultures and experiences," said Dalton, in his fourth year as an assistant track and field coach at Baylor after stops at LSU, Texas and the University of New Orleans, where he was the head coach for three seasons.

            "If I can, and we have the budget, I'm going to go and find them. And I'm going to find the ones no one else wants to make the effort to go see. I'm going to do home visits and go the extra mile to let them know, 'Hey, at Baylor, we really care. We really want you,' whereas some other schools may not even visit when they definitely have the resources and the time."

            The pipelines Dalton developed in his previous stops have certainly paid off at Baylor, where Kavia Francis (Jamaica), Gontse Morake (South Africa) and Imaobong Uko (Nigeria) made up three-fourths of the record-setting All-American 4x400 relay squad.

            On the men's side, Nigerians Nathaniel Ezekiel and Chinicherem Prosper Nnamdi won Big 12 Outdoor titles, earned All-America honors and set school records in the 400-meter hurdles and javelin, respectively. 

            "I think in college athletics, people are trying to look for the best kids everywhere," said second-year Baylor head coach Michael Ford. "When we hired Ben . . . we thought we could broaden our horizons a little bit more on the recruiting and kind of go outside the box a little bit."

            Part of the first wave of international student-athletes that Dalton helped recruit, Ackera Nugent from Jamaica won an NCAA indoor title and set a world U20 record in the 60-meter hurdles before transferring to Arkansas at the end of the 2022 season.

            One of three Jamaicans on this year's roster, Kavia Francis is a three-time All-American in the 4x400 relay and set the school record in the 400 meters at last year's Big 12 Outdoor meet with a time of 51.15. 
 
            "My whole recruiting journey was a bit shaky and a rough one," Kavia said, "because I didn't get to go on any visits. As soon as my visits started, COVID happened, so everything was shut down. I think it was two weeks before I was supposed to come to Baylor. It was basically just me taking word of mouth. The Christian community was a big part in my decision. And also, Baylor has a great track record when it comes to the 400."

            With no indoor track experience, Kavia said it was a challenge to get used to "the indoor system . . . and having to sprint basically two laps was a lot."
            "Indoors is so much different than outdoors," said Kavia, who refers to Jamaica's winter season as more of a Christmas breeze. "I remember my first race, I ran (56.22 in the 400 meters), and I came in with a PB of 53. So, I was like, 'Why am I running so slow indoors?'''

            Improving each meet of her freshman year in 2021, she finished fourth in the Big 12 Indoor in 52.86 and also ran leadoff leg on the 4x400 relay that finished eighth at the NCAA Indoor with a time of 3:33.27. Last year, she ran leadoff leg for the 4x400 relay indoors and 4x100 outdoors, earning All-America honors in both, and also placed eighth outdoors in the 400.

            "If you're getting big guns, they're already at the NCAA finals (as a freshman)," Dalton said. "Maybe they don't contribute as an individual that first year, but they've got to be there to experience it. All of our staff are working together really well, trying to help them be the best people they can be. We take care of them off the track as people, so that then on the track they can do what they were blessed to be able to do."

            At the Big 12 Indoor Championships this past weekend, Francis and Uko ran the first two legs on the 4x400 relay that won another conference title in 3:33.28 and also placed in the 400 meters. 

            "Indoor is different, where you're not in your lane the whole way. You've got to be a little bit more aggressive," Ford said. "The split times for the first part of your (400-meter) race are different from outdoor because you've got somebody coming down on you. It's a lot of different factors. I think indoor, it forces you to be aggressive when you're not aggressive."

            As a freshman, Uko anchored the 4x400 relay to a Big 12 Outdoor championship with a school-record time of 3:26.92 and also qualified for the NCAA Championships in the individual 400 meters. Before coming to Baylor, she won the 400 meters at the World Junior Championships in 2021 and also ran for Nigeria's mixed 4x400 relay at the 2020 Olympics. 

            "Gone are the days where you can bring a kid in and let them develop," Dalton said. "We still develop our kids, we do a really good job across the board. But Ima was the World Junior champion, Kavia broke the school record in the 400 as a sophomore. And then, Kavia Ima, Gontse and Mariah broke the 4x400 women's record."

            Morake, who also has international experience running for South Africa in the women's 4x400 relay at last year's World Championships, had an impressive debut season for the Bears after sitting out with an injury in 2021. 
 
            Not only was she a part of the record-setting 4x400 relay, Morake won a Big 12 championship in the 400-meter hurdles with a school-record time of 56.19. 

            "When I came here, I was injured, so I medically redshirted for the whole year indoor and outdoor season (2021)," Morake said. "And mentally, Coach Ben was there for me, knowing that I still do have a coach. That even though I'm on the sidelines, he is still there for me. And I'm being included as part of the team. That really helped me a lot."

            Although the South Africa track federation discourages athletes from going overseas to compete in the U.S., Morake said she "wanted to experience that for myself."
            "I just took it upon myself to reach out here," she said, "and then Coach Ben, luckily, found me and recruited me to come to Baylor."

            As big an impact as the international athletes made on the women's side, Ezekiel and Zaza were Big 12 champions in their respective events and ranked No. 1 all year. They came up short at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, but still combined to score nine of the team's 13 points to help the Baylor men to their highest national finish (18^th) in seven years. 

            Breaking Baylor's javelin school record multiple times, Prosper Nnamdi was undefeated against collegiate competition and led the NCAA Division I rankings for all but one night of the regular season. But he placed fifth at the NCAA Outdoor meet with a throw of 257 feet, 11 inches, well below his school-record mark of 266-6 that he set at the NCAA West Preliminaries. 

            "I think having a year under his belt, I think he will be even better this year," Ford said of Zaza, "because now I would say he knows how to compete at the bigger level, especially at the national meet. So, I think that will go well."

            Equally dominant in the 400 hurdles, Ezekiel squeezed out two-time NCAA champion Bayano Kamani for the school record with a winning mark of 48.42 in winning the Big 12 title. The Bears have a history in the event with Kamani, 2001 NCAA runner-up Michael Smith and Robert Griffin III's third-place finish as a first-semester freshman in 2008. 

            Still, Ezekiel's performances didn't match the high bar he set for himself. 

            "Last year was just kind of a beginning," Ezekiel said. "But to me, I was still learning how things go here. So, last year was good for me, but not that good. This year, I think I will be better."

            Ford said the key for Ezekiel's sophomore season is making sure he maintains throughout the year. He qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 400 with a third-place finish at the Big 12 meet in 45.77 and also ran a leg on the 4x400 relay that set a school record with a second-place and NCAA-qualifying time of 3:02.89. 

            "I'm not going to say he got tired at the end of the season, but I think it was a lot of racing for somebody that was 18 years old," Ford said. "Going into this season, we will kind of monitor his races a little more. But I also think he's bigger and stronger this year than he was last year because he came in in January last year. This year, he had a full fall."

            For a class that signed in November 2021, Baylor brought in additional recruits from Jamaica and Nigeria, as well as athletes from Barbados, France and Germany. 

            Jamaican Demar Francis (no relation to Kavia), a junior transfer from South Dakota, swept the 200 and 400 at the Summit League indoor and outdoor championships and ran on the 4x100 relay that won another conference title. At Excelsior High School, he broke a 28-year-old record for the 400 meters previously held by Olympic medalist Gregory Haughton, clocking a record-breaking time of 46.87. 

            "I didn't know a lot about the 400, because where I'm from, my high school wasn't big in track and field at a point," said Francis, who set a Jamaican indoor record in the 200 at the Big 12 meet with a time of 20.46 that ranks No. 2 all-time at Baylor, behind only Olympian Trayvon Bromell. 

            "But when I transferred high schools, I realized that I had a great talent. So, I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to give track and field a shot.' From there, I started following the sport more and took it more seriously."

            The other additions on the men's side were sprinter Ricquan Graham from Kingston, Jamaica and jumper Aren Spencer from Barbados. Graham set personal bests of 10.37 in the 100 and 20.66 in the 200 at the Jamaican Boys 16-19 Class One Championships last summer, while Spencer was a silver medalist in the long jump at the Barbados National Championships. 

            "I thought the coaches at South Dakota did a great job with Demar, but he thought he could run better and he wanted to get to a warmer climate, of course," Ford said. "And he knew the tradition of Baylor in the 400 and the 4x400 and, luckily, we had some (scholarship) money left over in the springtime and we were able to get him."

            A transfer from Iowa Central College, junior Victoria Adu from Berlin, Germany, won the hammer and weight throw at last year's NJCAA National Indoor and Outdoor Championships. With a personal-best of 5-11 ½ in the high jump, grad transfer Aicha Moumin from Troyes, France, "should score at the conference meet, for sure, and hopefully an outside shot at going to nationals," Ford said. 

            To date, half of Baylor's 2023 signing class comes from outside the U.S., with Jamaican U20 long jump champion Demario Prince; Yusuf Ali Abbas from Bahrain, the bronze medalist in the 400 meters at the 2022 World Junior Championships; and Calisha Taylor from Jamaica, the reigning 400-meter hurdles NJCAA national champion at New Mexico Junior College. 

            Taylor set the NJCAA national record in the 600-yard run last month with a time of 1:21.65, finishing second behind Baylor's Lily Williams at the Corky Classic in Lubbock. 

            "Back in the day, we had a couple (international student-athletes)," said Ford, in his second year as Baylor's head coach. "But with Ben going to a lot of the world championships and under-20 world championships, and then him having some connections with Caribbean countries because of his recruiting when he was at other schools, it just made a lot more sense for us to be half-U.S. and half-international."

            After next week's NCAA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, N.M., Baylor will host a couple of outdoor meets in the spring, with the newly named Clyde Hart Classic on March 24-25 and the Michael Johnson Invitational April 21-22 at Clyde Hart Track & Field Stadium.