Christopher Young of Barton County Community College won the men’s hammer throw with a personal best 56.61m on Thursday at the National Junior College Athletics Association (NJCAA) outdoor track and field championships being held at Brown Stadium at the University of Louisiana Monroe.

Young, who has committed to attend the University of Alabama starting in August, improved on his third place from last year and improved on his previous personal best 55.88m by going over 56.00m three times on Thursday.

The former Edwin Allen High standout, who has qualified for all four throwing events, is coming off a big performance at the recent NJCAA Region VI Championships at Pratt Community College in Kansas where he won the hammer throw and javelin and was second in the shot put and discus throw events.

Tamara Thompson of Cloud County Community College placed third in the women’s hammer throw with 50.27m behind Tania Da Silva of New Mexico Junior College who threw 55.40m and Natalie Albert of Iowa Western Community College who had a personal best 51.06m.

Calleisha Chance of Iowa Western Community College was also third in the women’s long jump with a season’s best 6.04m after finishing 16th last year while she attended Highland Community College.

Kavel Ritchie of New Mexico Junior College finished sixth with 5.91m as Jazmine Williamson of Barton Community College won with 6.25m and Haniyyah Johnson of Richard Bland Community College was second with a personal best 6.16m, on her final jump.

Kevin Brooks of Cloud County Community College leads the decathlon with 3,835 points after the first day with his teammate Brandon Hutchinson in sixth place with 3,530 points.

Brooks ran 10.61 seconds for the 100m, 6.52m in the long jump, 10.84m in the shot put, 1.92m in the high jump and 47.84 seconds in the 400m.