Stewart, Williams lead J’can charge at US college meet
JAMAICA’S collegiate athletes turned out in their numbers at the Razorback Invitational indoor meet in Fayetteville, Arkansas, last weekend with Keiron Stewart of the University of Texas, Nicholas Gordon of University of Nebraska and Kimberly Williams of Florida State recording outstanding performances.
The 5ft-11in Stewart, a sophomore at Texas and a Kingston College past student, clocked 7.84 seconds to win the 60m hurdles, beating Canadian Tremaine Grant (7.97) of Florida State and American Eric Lund (8.03) of the University of Nebraska.
Twenty-one-year-old Stewart was fourth at the Big 12 Indoor Championships but failed to get past the first round at the NCAA Division I Indoor Championships last year. The automatic qualifying mark for the 60m hurdles in NCAA Indoors this year is 7.70 seconds.
Gordon, 22, placed third in the long jump with a season best 7.92 metres. The Calabar past student, who won the NCAA Division I Indoor Championships in 2009 and placed eighth last year, secured his automatic qualification into the competition next month after surpassing the mark of 7.90m.
American Marquise Goodwin of Texas won the event in a personal best 8.14m, ahead of Zimbabwean Ngonidzashe Makusha of Florida State, who leaped 7.99.
Chad Wright, also of the University of Nebraska and a past student of Calabar, threw a personal best 17.27m to finish seventh overall in the shot put, despite winning heat two.
Latoya McDermott of Lousiana State University (LSU) ran a personal best 24.45 seconds to win heat 11 in the 200 metres. The St Andrew High past student, now 21, was the silver medallist at the World Youth Championships in 2007.
Reigning Central American and Caribbean (CAC) Games champion in triple jump, Williams, placed second in the long jump with a season best 6.48 metres.
She was beaten by the British Virgin Islands’ Chantel Malone, who won in a personal best and national record 6.65m.
Another Jamaican, Shantel Thompson, a past student of Vere Technical, now at the University of Nebraska, was ninth in that event in a season-best 5.93 metres.
