Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall’s Chioma Onyeaghala (second from right) sits alongside her family as she signs her letter of intent to compete for the Minnesota State University-Moorhead track and field team next year.

MARSHALL — Chioma Onyeaghala signed her letter of intent to take her track and field career to the next level on Wednesday morning, committing to compete at the Division II level with Minnesota State University-Moorhead’s womens team in the fall.

“I just really liked the area and the campus, and then I also like the track coach [Ryan Milner] and the atmosphere that was around it,” Onyeaghala said of her decision. “I’m just excited to meet new people and experience new things that I haven’t experienced yet.”

During her time as a student at Marshall High School, Onyeaghala has competed track and field for four years dating back to eighth grade. While she started out running flat sprints and the 100-meter hurdles in middle school, she changed her focus to jumping events and flat sprints.

As a freshman, Onyeaghala picked up the long jump and the high jump. While she didn’t compete in the high jump after her freshman season, the long jump stuck. She hit a mark of 15-6.5 as a freshman during outdoor track season, a mark that remained her personal best until her junior year.

At the Fargo Elite Meet in 2024, Onyeaghala bested her previous PR by more than two feet, hitting a distance of 17-7. She went on to finish the season as the Big South Large School runner-up in the event at 16-.85 and placed seventh in the Section 2AA meet at 15-8.75. Onyeaghala also placed third in the long jump at the conference meet as a sophomore.

“It [competing at the collegiate level] started coming up my junior year. I wasn’t planning on doing it, but then I just decided to reach out and see what happened,” Onyeaghala said.

As a sophomore, Onyeaghala set her personal-best in the 100-meter dash at 13.61. While that mark still stands, she continued to ascend in other events with a junior-year PR of 27.95 in the 200-meter dash and a distance of 26-10.25 in her first season with the shot put. She set the shot put mark at a meet in New Ulm on April 30, beating out her debut mark of 21-1 earlier the same month by five feet.

In terms of her academic career, Onyeaghala said she plans on studying biology to pursue a career as a physician assistant after graduation.

“I really just want to work in the medical field and that seems like an interesting job I’d like to explore,” Onyeaghala said.

MSU Moorhead placed 10th in last year’s Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference indoor championships and 11th in the outdoor championships. They also had two individuals qualify for the NCAA Division II womens track and field championships, with Ashley Hokanson just barely missing All-America status with a 13th-place finish in the pole vault and Shavantae Roberts competing in the 100-meter dash preliminaries.

The MSU Moorhead Dragons will kick off their indoor track season at the Dakota Alumni Classic in Fargo, N.D. on Dec. 13 and 14. Onyeaghala, meanwhile, will kick off her final prep season at an indoor track meet in Mankato on April 1.