BATON ROUGE, La. — Southern University's Tashina Alase has been named one of four finalist for the James J. Corbett Award given annually by the Allstate Sugar Bowl to the state's top male and female non-professional athlete.
 
Alase turned in a historic performance at the SWAC Outdoor Track & Field Championships. She blazed to the conference title in the women's 100-meter hurdles in a SWAC-record time of 12.64 seconds. The mark moved Alase to No. 1 in the NCAA this season and No. 8 in the world in 2026, cementing her status as one of the premier hurdlers in collegiate track and field.
 
She followed that by posting a time of 12.74 seconds at the NCAA Regional on May 30 to become the first Lady Jaguar to qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Championships (her semifinal race is at 7:08 p.m. on June 20) since 1994.
 
At the SWAC Outdoor Championships, Alase later added more points for Southern with a third-place finish in the women's 200 meters after clocking 23.62.
 
During the indoor season, the Minnesota native broke the school record in the 60-meter hurdles in three consecutive meets, highlighted by a blazing 8.04 in the preliminaries at the Southwestern Athletic Conference Indoor Track and Field Championships.
 
She returned in the finals to capture gold with a meet-record time of 8.17. She was the only non-Power 4 athlete to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 60-meter hurdles and she finished in 12th place overall. Alase is the first Southern athlete to qualify for both the NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championships during the same season.
 
Alase is joined as a finalist by Kailin Chio and Flau'jae Johnson of LSU and Leah Varisco of Sacred Heart High School in New Orleans.
 
The winners, as selected by the committee, will be announced at the Allstate Sugar Bowl Sports Awards Banquet presented by LCMC Health on June 24.
 
In addition, fans now have the opportunity to visit the Allstate Sugar Bowl website to make their own selections for the best of the best in the state. Voting will close on Friday, June 12. The fan choices will be announced at the same time as the official committee selections.

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