Former Lady Eagle Niesha Burgher’s outstanding track career reached its ultimate milestone in June when it added a new destination: Paris for the Olympic Games. She will step on the track on Sunday August 4 to fulfill a lifelong dream.

Burgher, an outstanding ex-Excelsior High School sprinter capped a very successful collegiate career earlier this year and left many shattered records in her wake. The just-graduated University of Texas At El Paso (UTEP) senior concluded a stellar collegiate career by breaking an almost decade old school record formerly held by Nigerian Olympian Tobi Amusan.

She clocked 23.20 in the 200m at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Collegiate Invitational on Jan. 21 to beat out Amusan’s time of 23.35 set in 2017, to hint at bigger things in her future.

But the capstone to Burgher’s outsanding career had to be her qualification for the 2024 Paris Olympics by finishing third at the Jamaican Trials in the 200 metres, behind world Champion Shericka Jackson, in a personal best time of 22.39 seconds. Her success hardly came as a surprise to those in the Excelsior Ccimmunity who had been following her career.

The seeds of Burgher’s success were sown at Excelsior, where she had received invaluable institutional support courtesy of the school in tandem with DASH Athletics and its arsenal of well-equipped coaches led by Michael Vassell and technical director, David Riley

Burgher is one of three Excelsior Eagles to have automatically qualified for Paris, as champion hurdler Ackera Nugent also joined her on the plane to the Olympics. But for an unfortunate bureaucrtic fiasco by the JAAA, the third qualifier, hammer thrower Nayoka Clunis, should have also been on the plane to France to compete in the 2024 Olympics.

Niesha Burgher, Ackera Nugent and Nayoka Clunis are but the most visible among a cadre of outstanding track and field athletes to have been nurtured by Excelsior High School, and subsequently gone on to great things, in recent years

Their qualification provides further affirmation that the once seemingly rudderless Excelsior High School track programme is now fully back on course, and barreling forward. From not winning a single point at Champs for more than a decade to producing two- and it should have been three-Olympians in a single year, is a monumental achievement for which all concerned should be commended.

Neisha Burgher will make her official Olympic debut on Sunday August 4 when she settles into the starting blocks to face the starter for the preliminaries of the women’s 200 sprint. And almost by providence, she will celebrate her 22nd birthday four days later on August. 8. Saturday August 3, 3024

Former Lady Eagle Niesha Burgher’s outstanding track career reached its ultimate milestone in June when it added a new destination: Paris for the Olympic Games. She will step on the track on Sunday August 4 to fulfill a lifelong dream.

Burgher, an outstanding ex-Excelsior High School sprinter capped a very successful collegiate career earlier this year and left many shattered records in her wake. The just-graduated University of Texas At El Paso (UTEP) senior concluded a stellar collegiate career by breaking an almost decade old school record formerly held by Nigerian Olympian Tobi Amusan.

She clocked 23.20 in the 200m at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Collegiate Invitational on Jan. 21 to beat out Amusan’s time of 23.35 set in 2017, to hint at bigger things in her future.

But the capstone to Burgher’s outsanding career had to be her qualification for the 2024 Paris Olympics by finishing third at the Jamaican Trials in the 200 metres, behind world Champion Shericka Jackson, in a personal best time of 22.39 seconds. Her success hardly came as a surprise to those in the Excelsior Community who had been following her career.

The seeds of Burgher’s success were sown at Excelsior, where she had received invaluable institutional support courtesy of the school in tandem with DASH Athletics and its arsenal of well-equipped coaches led by Michael Vassell and technical director, David Riley

Burgher is one of three Excelsior Eagles to have automatically qualified for Paris, as champion hurdler Ackera Nugent also joined her on the plane to the Olympics. But for an unfortunate bureaucrtic fiasco by the JAAA, the third qualifier, hammer thrower Nayoka Clunis, should have also been on the plane to France to compete in the 2024 Olympics.

Niesha Burgher, Ackera Nugent and Nayoka Clunis are but the most visible among a cadre of outstanding track and field athletes to have been nurtured by Excelsior High School, and subsequently gone on to great things, in recent years

Their qualification provides further affirmation that the once seemingly rudderless Excelsior High School track programme is now fully back on course, and barreling forward. From not winning a single point at Champs for more than a decade to producing two- and it should have been three-Olympians in a single year, is a monumental achievement for which all concerned should be commended.

Neisha Burgher will make her official Olympic debut on Sunday August 4 when she settles into the starting blocks to face the starter for the preliminaries of the women’s 200 sprint. And almost by providence, she will celebrate her 22nd birthday four days later on August. 8.