PNG’s athletes based in Texas and Kansas were on fire over the weekend.
Rellie Kaputin, Adrine Monagi and Peniel Richard competed at the Lone Star Conference Championships in Commerce, Texas while Wesley Logorava and Robson Yinambe were in action at the Region V Junior College Championships in Arkansas, Kansas.
Poro Gahekave, Shirley Vunatup and Naomi Kerari were at the Texas Tech University in Lubbock for their final meet before the Junior College National Championships next week.
After completing the heptathlon on Thursday/Friday, Monagi then ran the 100m and 100m hurdles heats on Friday, and on Saturday took part in another five events.
The highlights were a great personal best of 14.07s in the 100m hurdles and a 41.26m javelin throw.
Monagi amassed 32.5 points for her Angelo State team and was hugely disappointed that her team were beaten by a single point (211 to 210) by Kaputin’s West Texas A&M team.
Richard broke the long standing men’s national long jump record with a 7.23m (-0.1).
Kaputin was again in great form with an outdoor personal best 6.22m and NR in the long jump; a seasons best 1.72m in high jump and a huge 13.20m in the triple jump (+4.6).
Richard’s long jump eclipsed the 7.21m record held jointly by Sandy Katusele (Samoa 2003) and Edward Bai (Port Moresby 1998).
Kaputin has jumped 6.27m indoors this year but 6.22m is an outdoor national record, beating the 6.10m that earned her second place at last year’s NCAA Division 2 National Championships.
Yinambe caused quite a stir at the Regional Championships after winning the decathlon with 6284 points, just four points less than at the 2015 Games.
He then went on to run a personal best of 15.50s in the 110m hurdles and a good 55.74s in the 400h.
Logorava ran personal best times of 10.68s and 21.60s in the 100/200 and followed this with a 49.87s clocking for the 400m.
Gahekave set a personal best of 2:16.41s in the 800m as did Vunatup with a time of 56.95s in the 400m. Kerari had a season’s best in the high jump reaching 1.61m.