Each week during the University of Kansas’ sports seasons, the Journal-World staff will select one athlete from a KU men’s sports team and one from a women’s sports team as athletes of the week.
For the week of March 30 to April 5, the selections are Anthony Meacham and Elle Evans.
Anthony Meacham, track and field
Ashton Barkdull may have won a recent national championship in the men’s indoor pole vault, but Meacham matched his teammate’s performance over the weekend at the Battle on the Bayou in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by clearing 5.80 meters to take first place in the event. That is the best pole-vault mark in the country, and it is the first time in NCAA history that two members of the same team have cleared 19 feet in a given season.
Elle Evans, women’s basketball
After concluding her official KU career in the WBIT semifinals, Evans put on quite an encore performance at the College 3-Point Championship in Indianapolis on Friday. She beat Indiana’s Shay Ciezki in the women’s contest and then DePaul men’s basketball’s CJ Gunn in the overall Battle of Champions in dramatic fashion, 24-23, by making her last two-point “money ball” at the conclusion of the event. Evans also teamed with Purdue’s Fletcher Loyer and Portland State’s Jaylin Henderson for victory in a third event, the Team Shootout.
