Bissah sweeps NSU top awards

Ghana’s Martha Bissah capped an outstanding athletics season by grabbing top honours as the Norfolk State University (NSU) Female Athlete of the Year for the third consecutive year.

The Junior (third year) cross country and track and field athlete was the star at the NSU athletics department’s end-of-year awards ceremony last Monday.

She shared the podium with men's basketball player, Derrik Jamerson Jr., who was named Male Athlete of the Year.

Martha, who won gold for Ghana at the 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing, China, walked away with two other awards — Most Valuable Player (MVP) in Women’s Cross Country and MVP for Women’s Track & Field.

This year, the 21-year-old athlete has continued her dominance of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) track and field events and cemented herself as one of the top track performers in US collegiate athletics.

Last month she posted a time of 2:04.48 minutes in the women’s 800 metres of the 2019 NCAA Indoor Championships in Birmingham, Alabama.

Only last week she ran a season best time of 55.72 seconds in the 400m at the Colonial Relays in Williamsburg, Virginia, in addition to other stellar performances.

Last year, the Ghanaian became the first female since 2002-03 to win two straight MEAC cross country individual championships when she easily outraced the field by some 40 seconds.

She led the Spartans (NSU) to a second-place team finish, their best since 2009.

Reacting to Martha’s latest achievement, a former Ghana athletics chief and a benefactor of the athlete, Mr George Haldane-Lutterodt, said the youngster’s year-on-year performance at NSU was “remarkable and an inspiration to the youth”.