NICKISHA Pryce of University of Arkansas is now the national record holder in the women’s 400m as she clocked 48.89 seconds to win the event at the NCAA Division 1 track and field championships at Hayward Field, Eugene, Oregon on Saturday.

Pryce — the national champion and a member of the medal-winning women’s 4x400m relay team at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary last year — broke the 22-year-old Jamaican record, 49.30 seconds, set by Lorraine Fenton in July 2002.

She ran 49.32 seconds at the Southeastern Conference Championships at University of Florida on May 11 — then joint second-best ever by a Jamaican with two-time World Championships silver medallist Shericka Williams.

Her time is the joint 13th best of all time with Mexico’s Anna Guevara, ahead of American Chandra Cheeseborough, 49.05 seconds, and just behind Valerie Brisco Hook’s 48.83s.

Additionally Pryce, who led home a 1-2-3-4 for University of Arkansas, broke the NCAA record (49.13s) and meet record (49.36s), both set last year by then teammate Britton Wilson, and set a world-leading mark in the process.

Romaine Beckford of University of Arkansas ended his college career on a high when he retained his men’s high jump title with an outdoor season-best 2.26m on Friday.

Beckford, who won last year when he was a student at University of South Florida, completed the double-double as he had also won the indoor title in March.

The 2023 World Championships representative made an unsuccessful attempt at the Olympic standard 2.33m, coming up just short.

There were individual top three finishes for discus thrower Racquil Broderick of University of Southern California and 400m runner JeVaughn Powell of University of Florida, who also ran a personal best 44.54 seconds, attaining the Olympic qualifying mark in the process.

Broderick, a freshman, threw 61.77m for second place while Kai Chang, the school record holder at the University of Florida, was fifth with 60.61m.

Powell, who was a member of the Jamaican men’s 4x400m medal-winning team in Budapest last year, beat his two-year-old best of 44.87s to finish third in the men’s 400m, improving on his seventh place last year.

Powell played a big part in Florida’s one-point win in the overall title race when he ran the lead-off leg on the men’s 4x100m relay team and then the third leg of the men’s 4x400m team that placed third, to clinch the team title.

Reheem Hayles, who was also a part of the Florida 4x400m team, was seventh in the 400m in 45.78s.

Tarees Rhoden of Clemson University led for most of the way but had to be satisfied with fourth in the men’s 800m in a personal best 1:45.70 minutes, just better than his previous best of 1:45.71 set in May, while Kimar Farquharson of Texas A&M University was seventh in 1:46.38.

Luke Brown of University of Kentucky was fifth in the men’s triple jump with 16.44m (-0.5m/s), Terrol Wilson of University of Nebraska was ninth with 16.21m (1.4m/s), while Safin Wills of Purdue jumped 15.50m (0.7m/s).

Jerome Campbell of University of Northern Colorado finished seventh in the 110m hurdles with 13.49 seconds (0.1m/s).