NORFOLK, Va. – Norfolk State athletes Martha Bissah and Kiara Grant will conclude highly successful track seasons this week when they compete at the 2019 NCAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Austin, Texas.

Both Bissah and Grant earned All-America recognition at the 2019 NCAA Indoor Championships in March, and will look to duplicate that beginning this Thursday at Mike A. Myers Stadium on the campus of the University of Texas. Grant will compete in the 100-meter dash prelims at 9:16 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, while Bissah will run in the 800-meter heats that begin at 9:44 p.m. the same night. Athletes must finish in the top two in their heats or be one of the two next-fastest times to qualify for Saturday's event finals.

Bissah, a junior from Accra, Ghana, is making her third straight NCAA championship meet appearance. She placed sixth outdoors last June to earn first-team All-America honors, and also was a first-team All-American at the national indoor meet in March after a fifth-place finish. She is the first Spartan female to ever qualify for three Division I national championship track meets. Bissah's season-best time came in early May when she won her third consecutive MEAC outdoor title in a school and personal-record time of 2 minutes, 3.13 seconds in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Grant, a sophomore from Kingston, Jamaica, is the first Spartan in the program's Division I history to qualify for an NCAA Championship track meet in the 100 meters. She did so by placing fifth at the NCAA East Preliminary Meet two weeks ago in Jacksonville with a time of 11.19 seconds. Her season-best time for NCAA rankings purposes was an 11.07 wind-aided clocking at the MEAC prelims last month, and her top wind-legal time is 11.11 seconds from the MEAC finals. That time set new NSU and Jamaican under-19 national records.

Grant earned second-team All-America honors during indoor season with a 14th-place finish in the 60-meter dash.

Running events will be televised each night on ESPN2. The women's 100 meter final is at 7:22 p.m. ET Saturday, and the women's 800m final is at 7:44 that same evening.