When Kyle Strawn sets to throw the hammer, he usually improves from his first throw on, but that wasn’t the case as he threw a career-best on his last attempt.
Strawn’s personal-best of 68.18 meters outlasted his record at Florida Relays two weeks prior by 0.69 meters at the Tom Jones Memorial Invite at Percy Beard Track.
“During my competition I was struggling to find a rhythm,” Strawn said.
“The first throw I randomly had my calves cramp up on me, then the second one was a really conservative throw that just got out to 65 meters, and then from there I had to go for it and finally on my sixth throw found a good one.”
The junior transfer thrower from Santa Barbara, who was a Southeastern Conference Co-Athlete of the Week last week, remains second on the UF all-time list.
“He’s working hard, doing good things and when he wants to be a force at the national meet he’s headed in that direction.”
Unlike the dominant effort from the sprinters at Florida Relays, the field athletes turned out to be the difference at the Tom Jones Invite.
In addition to Strawn’s performance, thrower Jayla Bostic, jumper Taylor Burke and thrower Marija Vucenovic all turned in first place finishes respectively.
Burke, competing in the women’s high jump leapt on her second attempt to a 1.74-meter victory.
Burke said although winning first place, she thought she could’ve performed better throughout her three jumps, but overall she was satisfied with her outing.
Tagging along with the field athletes standout performances, the women’s 800-meter run was the only running event that was dominant for Florida.
Agata Strausa, Cory McGee and Rebekah Greene turned in a podium finish.
Senior distance runner Strausa (2:04.67) crossed the line ahead of the other 15 competitors to take the victory and fell shy of the track record of 2:01.35 set in 1992.
The Gators will knock off the trip to Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa to take a week off to recover and prepare for the LSU Invitational in Baton Rouge, LA.
“We are going to take the weekend off,” Holloway said.
“You have to get healthy and take care of some things. The big thing now is just to get ready for LSU in a couple of weeks and conference a couple of weeks after that. We have some people are a little dinged up.”
Follow Lawrence Laguna on Twitter @LagunaLawrence
