In the Owls third-place finish at the Villanova Invitational on Saturday in Staten Island, New York, freshman sprinter and hurdler Sylvia Wilson broke two school records.
Wilson now has Temple’s best time in the 60-meter dash and the 60-meter hurdles.
She beat the previous best time in the open 60 by a tenth of a second, finishing with a time of 7 seconds, 59 milliseconds in the preliminary round, where she took the first spot. She ended up finishing in fourth place in the finals to score five points for the Owls.
In the 60-meter hurdles, Wilson notched a second-place finish in the finals with a time of 8.51, beating the previous school record of 8.53, which was set in 2005.
“Sylvia was the star of the weekend,” coach Elvis Forde said. “This was certainly a highlight of the meet, breaking not only one, but two school records.”
Between the two events, Wilson contributed 13 points to Temple’s 72 overall points, helping the Owls finish third out of 12 teams at the event. Temple was five points behind University at Albany, the second place team.
“Overall, I felt like the weekend went well,” Forde said. “We saw some things we need to work on to get better, and we just have to keep making improvements over the next couple of weeks.”
Temple scored a combined five points in the 200-meter race with junior sprinter and jumper Bionca St. Fleur finishing in fifth place and junior sprinter and jumper Jimmia McCluskey finishing in eight place.
Junior sprinter Kenya Gaston ran the 400-meter race, taking second place with a time of 55.80, her best time so far this season. Also competing and scoring in this event for Temple was freshman sprinter Aliya Sharp, scoring two points with a seventh place finish.
“Another person who stepped up for us was Kenya Gaston,” Forde said. “Breaking 56 seconds should really give her some confidence going into the upcoming meets.”
The other Temple runner to score in the 60-meter hurdles was junior hurdler Simone Brownlee, who came in fifth in the finals with a time of 8.78.
Both the high jump and the long jump yielded first-place finishes for Temple. Freshman multis competitor Crystal Jones nabbed the top spot in the high jump with a jump of 1.73 meters, scoring 10 points for the Owls.
The other first place went to McCluskey in the long jump with a jump of 5.65 meters while St. Fleur took second with a 5.64 meter jump.
While the Owls had success in several events, they struggled in the distance events.
The highest Temple finisher in the 800-meter, one mile, and 3000-meter races was freshman distance runner Maddie Bixler, who came in 14th in the 3000 with a time of 10 minutes, 43 seconds, and 17 milliseconds.
“I would have liked to see the distance runners do better,” Forde said. “We won our heats, but we didn’t race competitively.”
Maura Razanauskas can be reached at maura.lyn.razanauskas@temple.edu
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