Three HT athletes to compete at NAIA Indoor Track & Field Championships

By Alan Wiederhold
HT Athletic Communications

AUSTIN – Three Huston-Tillotson University student-athletes will compete at the 2026 NAIA Indoor Track & Field National Championships, as announced by the university and the NAIA this week.

Two HT women and one HT man will compete at the national indoor championships, scheduled for Thursday, March 5 through Saturday, March 7, in Gainesville, Fla., at the Alachua County Sports & Events Center at Celebration Pointe.

Ayanna Johnson and Chaleica Booker, both juniors, will represent the HT women at the 46th NAIA Women's Indoor Championship meet. Emmanuel Idris, also a junior at HT, will represent the Ram men at the 61st NAIA men's championship event.

Johnson (Houston, Texas / Lamar Consolidated) and Booker (Chicago, Ill. / Oswego) both qualified in the 200-meter dash. Both athletes recorded their qualifying times (Booker, 24.59 seconds; Johnson, 24.99 seconds) at the Howie Ryan Invitational at the University of Houston last week.

Booker will also compete in the 400-meter dash, having qualified with a time of 55.91 seconds at the Howie Ryan Invitational.

On the men's side, Idris (Lokoja, Nigeria / Command Secondary School) qualified for the 60-meter dash after turning in a time of 6.80 seconds at the Howie Ryan Invitational. In a field of more than 60 competitors, the majority of whom competed for NCAA Division I programs, Idris reached the final and placed sixth. He was the top NAIA competitor in the event and had the second-best finish of all non-NCAA Division I competitors.

All three athletes are making return trips to the NAIA Indoor championship meet. Booker and Johnson were part of the HT women's 4-by-400-meter relay team that qualified for the 2025 championship event. 

This will be Johnson's third trip to the NAIA championships, as she qualified for the 2024 championship in the 200-meter dash as a freshman. That year, she turned in a time of 25.16 seconds in the final event.

Idris will compete in the 60-meter dash at the national championship for the second consecutive year. He finished 24th out of 35 competitors last year with a time of 6.87 in the event preliminaries.

The NAIA will broadcast the championship meet; links can be found at https://naianetwork.com .

– HT –