Oniya breaks shot put record at JC meet
EMMANUEL Oniya of Munro College produced a massive 17.45 metres (5kg) to win the Class Two boys shot put event to highlight yesterday’s 17th staging of the WATA/Powerade/JC invitational at 189 Old Hope Road.
The burly thrower improved the old mark of 16.61m established by Calabar’s Ashina Miller in 2009 by 0.84 centimetres.
In fact, Oniya season opener in the year’s first track and field meet, is 0.04 cm better than Miller’s championship record winning throw of 17.41 at Boys and Girls Champs last season.
Randale Watson of Calabar with 17.24m and Munro’s Rajae Gayle with 15.57m finished second and third yesterday.
Gavin Gibson of Jamaica College and Chanice Porter of Manchester were responsible for the two of the other meet records to fall in the Class Three boys long jump and the class two girls high jump.
Gibson leaped 6.12m to erase the 11 year-old mark of 6.06m in the long jump pit, while Porter cleared 1.80m to better the 2009 mark of 1.75m set by Shanieka Thomas of Vere Technical.
At press time, Kamal Fuller of Wolmer’s Boys’ was the top individual performer with victories in the Class One long jump and 110m hurdle events.
Fuller, the bronze medallist from ‘Champs’ 2009, leaped 7.55 metres to take the horizontal jump ahead of Morant Bay’s Carlington Benjamin with 6.91m and Oberlin’s Romane Strachan 6.75.
Fuller had earlier clocked 14.63 seconds to win the sprint hurdles, turning back the challenge of Partick Campbell of Munro College and David Hall of St Jago, who both returned 14.93 to tie for second place.