The Owls had 10 Top-10 finishes and a first-place finish in the NYC Gotham Cup meet in Staten Island, New York on Jan. 22.
Freshman sprinter and hurdler Sylvia Wilson led all competitors in the 60-meter hurdles, earning the gold medal with a time of eight seconds, 59 milliseconds.
Wilson set a new personal-best time and is six milliseconds away from tying the school record in the event.
“She’s a quality athlete,” coach Elvis Forde said. “She’s stepped up every weekend and what she is doing now in her races has a lot to do with her mental toughness.”
Junior hurdler Simone Brownlee also competed in the 60-meter hurdles, finishing in fifth place.
“The team is getting better and better and this week was no different,” Forde said. “We had strong performances from the athletes that have been doing well the past weeks, too.”
In the 200-meter dash, the Owls had two Top-10 finishers. Junior sprinter and jumper Bionca St. Fleur claimed fourth place with a time of 24.76 seconds while junior sprinter Kenya Gaston came in sixth place, 17 milliseconds behind St. Fleur.
Gaston also participated in the 400-meter race, finishing in fifth place, with teammate freshman sprinter Aliya Sharp finishing ninth out of 89 participants.
In the long jump, junior sprinter and jumper Jimmia McCluskey was the first finisher for the Owls, coming in seventh place with a jump of 5.80 meters, while freshman Crystal Jones earned a ninth-place finish.
Junior hurdler and jumper Simone Chapman came in ninth place in the triple jump, recording an 11.51 meter jump.
For the first time this season, Temple entered a distance medley relay team. The team consisted of freshmen Alexis O’Shea, Brigit Andersson, Katie Leisher, and Sharp. The Owls finish fifth out of nine teams.
“I was a little disappointed with their performance,” Forde said. “The only one that really performed as well as I had hoped was Aliya in the 400. The effort was a little lethargic.”
This relay consists of four legs of varying distances: 1200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters, and 1600 meters. Temple’s time was 12 minutes, 38 seconds, 23 milliseconds.
The shot put was the other event an Owl competed in for the first time this season. Jones finished in 40th place with a throw of 7.66 meters.
“We don’t expect to do much in this event,” Forde said. “We are grooming Crystal Jones to get ready for the multis competition later on to see if she can score big enough in the shot put.”
Maura Razanauskas can be reached at maura.razanauskas@temple.edu
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