OWAYNE Owens of University of Virginia and Nayoka Clunis of University of Tennessee were winners between Thursday and Friday as the NCAA outdoors track and field season gathered momemtum after last year’s cancellation due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Owens set a personal best 16.29m (1.2m/s) to win the men’s triple jump at the Raleigh Relays hosted by North Carolina State University on Friday, while Clunis won her first title while representing the University of Tennessee on Thursday, taking the women’s hammer throw at the Florida State University (FSU) Relays in Tallahassee, Florida.

It was a good two days for Clunis, the former Excelsior High athlete who had two top 10 performances for University of Tennessee while gettig a third top 10 finish at the event which continues and ends today.

Owens, the former Cornwall College athlete, extended his good form from the indoors as he smashed his own previous college best of 14.80m set in 2019 and climbed to third on the University of Virginia all-time list.

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) indoor champion had four of his five legal jumps over 16.00m.

On Thursday, Clunis threw a season-best 59.99m to win the hammer throw, just marginally better than her only other legal effort of 55.98m to record the third-best mark ever in Tennessee programme history.

Clunis, who has a 2018 personal best 64.26m, beat University of Georgia’s Charlotte Williams (57.19m) and Tennessee teammate Chandler Hayden (56.59m).

Later in the day she was sixth in the shot put with a personal best 16.07m, eighth all-time at Tennessee, and then finished fourth in the discus throw on Friday with a best mark of 51.56m.

Shanice Love of Florida State was second overall and the first college thrower in the women’s discus throw with a season-best 58.13m, improving on the 56.98m she threw last week.

Clemson University’s Danielle Sloley had two personal best performances, 14.28m in the shot put and 42.31m in the discus throw, while national representative Lloydrica Cameron, formerly of University of Florida, was second in the shot put in 17.48m.

Clemson’s Roja Stona won the men’s discus throw with 60.87m, with teammate Zico Campbell — who was eighth in the discus throw with 48.11m after he had thrown 17.51m for sixth place in the shot put on Thursday — moving up one spot on the Clemson top 10 list to join eighth place.

FSU’s Sanjae Lawrence, who had one legal throw of 17.49m, finished in seventh place.

Meanwhile, former Rusea’s High Western Champs winner Myesha Nott of West Virginia University was sixth in the women’s triple jump at the Raleigh Relays with a best mark of 12.00m while her teammate Abigail Mullings was third in the high jump with 1.70m.

On the track, Trishana Hemmings of Clemson was second in the 200m at FSU Relays in 23.69 seconds with Shian Hyde of FSU fifth in 24.16 seconds.

ACC Indoors 60m champion Fabian Hewitt of Clemson was fourth in the men’s 200m in 21.18 seconds with World Under-20 representative Chantz Sawyers of the University of Florida seventh in 21.48 seconds.

Sean Bailey of the University of Texas El Paso advanced to the final of the men’s 400m at the Texas Relays after running 46.62 seconds in the preliminary rounds Thursday.

At the Raleigh Relay, Kayla Bonnick of the University of Virginia ran a personal best 11.60 seconds (1.5m/s), sixth best at Virginia to qualify for the women’s 100m final Saturday.

The former St Jago runner was second in her heat while her teammate Andrenette Knight ran a wind-aided 13.64 seconds (2.7m/s) to advance to the final of the 100m hurdles as well.