FAYETTEVILLE — From Wooo Pig to the Worlds, it was a long track and field season for Arkansas junior Ayden Owens-Delerme.
The season began on Dec. 3 at the Wooo Pig Classic at Arkansas’ Randal Tyson Center, where Owens-Delerme ran the 600 meters in 1 minute, 19.18 seconds and cleared 15 feet, 5 inches in the pole vault.
It ended on Sunday night at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., where Owens-Delerme finished fourth in the decathlon at the World Outdoor Track and Field Championships with a Puerto Rican national record and Arkansas school record 8,532 points.
Earlier this season, Owens-Delerme won NCAA titles in the heptathlon and decathlon. He also competed in hurdles races and on relays at the SEC Championships indoors and outdoors and scored 8,528 points at the Mount San Antonio College Relays in April for what at the time was a collegiate decathlon record.
In all Owens-Delerme, who transferred to Arkansas from Michigan, competed in at least one event in 16 meets indoors and outdoors for the Razorbacks over 234 days.
“There are a lot of emotional ups and downs, the feelings of trying to stay in go-mode for seven months,” Owens-Delerme said in a video interview with the track and field website Citius Mag on Sunday night. “I’ve been at this since December, since my first meet in college.
“Now I’m fourth in the world. Who’s complaining? I got a personal best. I represented Puerto Rico and my family in the crowd.
“I’m basking in how this feels. I’m 22 and I feel like I just introduced myself to the world.”
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Owens-Delerme took the first-day decathlon lead Saturday night when he shot from fourth to first in the points standings by running a personal-best 45.07 seconds to win the 400 meters. The time would have placed sixth in 400 meters at the World Championships.
“That moment changed some things for Ayden,” said Razorbacks assistant Travis Geopfert, who coaches Owens-Delerme. “He’s a celebrity now.
“Walking back to the hotel from the track after Day One, everybody was wanting to take pictures with him. He put himself on a world stage, and I think he has what it takes to continue to shine at the highest level.”
Other personal-bests for Owens-Delerme on the first day were in the long jump (25-0 3/4) and high jump (6-7 1/2) as he scored 4,606 points.
Owens-Delerme capped Sunday’s events with a personal-best 4:13.02 to win the 1,500 meters after he had — by his high standards — subpar marks in the pole vault (14-9) and javelin (167-3). He had the pole slip out of his hands during warmups and also on one of his three missed attempts at 15-1.
“It’s 10 events, man,” Owens-Delerme said. “And one event can go great, like the 400 or the 1,500. And then you can get an event like the javelin, where you’re six meters under your PR, or the pole vault where you slip off the pole and almost break your body.
“Sometimes it’s just who can get all the way through the 10 events. A lot of people [five] dropped out. I’m just happy to be here. Be the fourth-greatest athlete in the world. Yeah, I said it.
“The decathlon deserves respect, and after today, we’re going to get it.”
Geopfert, a former decathlete at Northern Iowa, said Owens-Delerme demonstrated his resolve after the pole vault and javelin didn’t go as well as expected.
“Ayden showed what he was made of in that 1,500 as far as grit and perseverance,” Geopfert said. “He competed all the way to the end.”
Owens-Delerme said now it’s time for an extended break.
“I’m just going to hang out with the family and relax — for like a month,” he said with a smile. “I’m tired and ready to sleep.”
Geopfert said he encourages his athletes to take three weeks off when their season is over.
“If Ayden needs a little more time than that, he can have it,” Geopfert said. “But he’s going to get stir-crazy after about a week off and he’s going to want to do something.
“So we’ll send him swimming or bike-riding or something. But we’re going to keep it low-key for a while.”
The toll of a long college season likely impacted Georgia junior Kyle Garland, who scored 8,720 points at the USA Championships at Arkansas’ John McDonnell Field on May 7 to break Owens-Delerme’s collegiate record, but couldn’t come close to that total at the NCAA meet or World Championships.
Owens-Delerme won the NCAA title with 8,457 points to match the meet record set by Oregon’s Ashton Eaton in 2010. Garland was third at the NCAA meet with 8,333 points and finished 11th at the World Championships with 8,133.
“I’m really proud of the way Ayden continued to grow during the entire season,” Geopfert said. “You could see his maturity level continuing to rise.
“He’s a student of the sport and wants to study his craft, so he took everything that happened throughout the season as a learning experience.
“He just kept getting better and better all year long, and that’s hard to do. It’s hard to keep that mental focus and that discipline for such a long year.
“These competitions are extremely taxing mentally, to challenge yourself to keep pushing the envelope and gravitate toward excellence. These are high intensity, high pressure situations where you have to be a superstar mentally to handle it, and Ayden has done that time and time again.”
Geopfert said that as gratifying as finishing fourth at the World Championships was for Owens-Delerme, it will serve to motivate him to improve.
“It’s an experience that’s leaving him hungry,” Geopfert said. “There’s a fire in his belly for more.
“He knows he left some points on the table, and it’s going to be great for us to go back and put the building blocks together and we’re going to help him continue to develop to be even better.”