The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunmedia.net

AFTER a competitive indoor season where she produced some respectable times, Purdue University Boilermakers’ sophomore Devynne Charlton is now coming into her own on the outdoor season.

Competing at the Drake Relays over the weekend, Charlton helped the Boilermakers lower a couple more school records in the shuttle hurdle relay as well as the 100-metre hurdles as their women’s team finished tied for third in the scored relay meet with 20 points.

The women’s shuttle hurdle relay team opened the morning with the prelims as the team of Charlton, Shantyra Delaney, Symone Black and Cierra Brown ran a time of 56.18 seconds to take second and advance to the finals. In the final, the team went to work and took down the school record with a second-place time of 54.65 seconds, just 0.30 of a second behind the winning time.

Charlton wasn’t done yet as she came back a day after qualifying for the finals to run the best race of her career. She took third overall with a time of 13.06 seconds (wind +1.1) to shatter the nine-year-old school record of 13.27 seconds set by Leah Kincaid.

Charlton’s time ranks eighth in the country for the season and second in the Big Ten. It also turned out to be a new Bahamas national record, erasing the previous mark of 13.13 set by Ivanique Kemp in 2012 when she competed for the University of Arkansas at the NCAA Division 1 Championships in Des Moines, Iowa.

“It feels pretty good. I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t get the junior national record in my last year as a junior last year, but for me to come back this year and get the senior national record, it feels very good,” said Charlton in an interview with The Tribune yesterday.

As for the race, Charlton admitted that she could have run faster.

“Technically, I’m just trying to get better,” she said. “I felt a bit of pressure from some of the people coming down the race, but I was able to maintain my composure and I was still able to run a pretty respectable time. I got a couple of records, including the Bahamas national, so I’m quite pleased with my performance.”

As the season progresses, she feels she will only get better because she’s quite comfortable in her performance and she attributed it to the coaching staff at Purdue led by the Bahamian duo of Lonnie Greene and Norbert Elliott.

“We are competing exceedingly well,” said Greene, the head coach. “We are spinning up at the right time. I like the way we are competing heading into the tail end of the season. If we can keep doing what we are doing and keep improving we will be very tough in the Big Ten. We just have to finish. It’s coming together at the right time.”

The Boilermakers women’s 4x100m relay team of Saannah Carson, Bahamian Carmeisha Cox, Charlton and Autumn Health took second as they ran a time of 44.82 seconds. That time was just 0.02 of a second behind the winning time, and is 0.20 of a second behind Purdue’s best mark of the season, which is the school record.

The Boilermakers are scheduled to be back in action next weekend with their only home meet of the spring. The team hosts the Rankin/Poehlein Invitational on Friday and Saturday.