EUGENE, Ore.—On her second attempt with the bar set at a height of 1.87 meters (6'1 ½") Sanaä Barnes (Keller, Texas) set a new lifetime best and school record while soaring into the final of the women's high jump during competition on the first night of the 2021 U.S. Olympic Team Trials at Hayward Field on Friday afternoon. Barnes will next compete in the final round on Sunday evening at 8:50 p.m. Eastern time (5:50 p.m. Pacific time).
The mark of 1.87 meters improved Barnes' previous lifetime best by two centimeters and bettered her own school record by three centimeters. She came in 10th overall out of 25 athletes in the qualifying round on Friday to earn her place among the top 12 that moved on to the final round. Barnes was successful on three of her five jumps during qualifying, including attempts at 1.77 meters and 1.82 meters earlier in the afternoon before notching her biggest jump yet on her final attempt of the day.
Two flights in the high jump took place simultaneously and the qualifying competition lasted just over 40 minutes while needing only three progressions of the bar before a clean top-12 without any ties had emerged from the initial field of 25 competitors. Barnes is one of five current collegians among the 12 qualifiers for the final. She is a four-time All-American in the high jump and the only athlete in program history to be an All-American in any of the jumps.
Barnes owns 14 of the top 17 performances in Villanova history in the women's high jump, including her latest school record set on Friday evening. She previously recorded a mark of 1.84 meters indoors during the NCAA Championships as a freshman in 2019, while her former lifetime best of 1.85 meters had been set in June 2018 at the USATF Junior Outdoor Championships.
Jumping seventh in the order in Flight 1 on Friday, Barnes missed her first attempt of the day at 1.77 meters (5'9 ¾"). She bounced back to make it over the bar on her second try, then matched her best mark of the season when she cleared 1.82 meters (5'11 ½") on her first try. The field had narrowed down from 25 to 16 when the bar was raised to 1.87 meters (6'1 ½"), with four more athletes being eliminated at what proved to be the final height of the evening.
The contenders for a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team must also record the Olympic standard of 1.96 meters (6'5") in competition no later than June 29, although the mark does not specifically have to come during competition at the Trials.
Barnes is of course no stranger to high-level competition at the national and international level. She represented the United States in international competition during three straight summer seasons (2017-19) and was the gold medalist in the high jump at the Pan-American U20 Championships in Costa Rica in 2019, where she recorded a winning height of 1.83 meters (6'0"). Barnes previously competed at the IAAF World U20 Championships in Tampere, Finland in the summer of 2018 and the Pan-American U20 Championships in Peru in 2017. Her former lifetime best of 1.85 meters (6'0 ¾") during the USATF Junior Outdoor Championships in 2018 occurred the summer prior to her freshman year at Villanova.
Sunday night's final will begin at 8:50 p.m. Eastern time, with live television coverage on NBC starting at 9 p.m.. A direct link to online streaming coverage of the women's high jump competition will be posted on social media (@NovaTrackXC) just prior to the start of the action on Sunday evening.
