Brown, 22, is the second-fastest Jamaican woman ever over the 100m hurdles by virtue of the 12.40s she ran to win the NCAA national title in June 2019. Only Danielle Williams’ 12.32 is faster.
The University of Arkansas alum goes to MVP International with a stellar collegiate record.
Her 100-meter hurdles time of 12.40 40 is tied for the second-fastest performance in the 100-meter hurdles in NCAA history. Only Briana Rollins’ 12.39 is faster.
In 2019, Brown, a former student at Wolmer’s High School for Girls in Jamaica, was also the SEC Outdoor Track Athlete of the Year and is the only woman in NCAA history with four performances of 12.57 or better in a single season.
Brown, who signed a professional contract with Puma in the summer of 2019, was seventh in the 2019 World Championships finals that featured two other Jamaican women – Williams and Megan Tapper.
At MVP International she joins a number of rising Caribbean track stars including Antigua's Cejhae Green, Teray Smith of the Bahamas as well as fellow Jamaicans Natalliah Whyte and Jonielle Smith, 2019 World Championship sprint relay gold medalist as well as 400m finalists Akeem Bloomfield and Nathon Allen.
In 2019, Whyte who was then training at MVP International in Florida ran a blistering lead-off leg before handing off to 100m gold medallist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce as Jamaica sped to a gold medal in the 4x100m relay at the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar.
Notwithstanding the intervening ‘pandemic year’, 2020, when Covid-19 shut the world down; her confidence boosted by the gold-medal performance in Doha, Whyte began 2021 in fine form running a lifetime best of 11.04 at the Pure Athletics Sprint Elite Meet in Miramar, Florida on May 2. However, for reasons that she is yet to comprehend, Whyte failed to make Jamaica's team to the Tokyo Olympic Games after finishing seventh in the 100m semi-finals at the National Championships last June in a disappointing 11.52.
“I don’t know what happened to be honest. I started the season well but didn’t progress,” she said while revealing that the disappointment of not making the team to Tokyo was hard to take.
“I took not making the team really hard but sometimes we rise, sometimes we fall but you have to know how to turn negatives into positives.”
During the season break, Whyte took the decision to leave the MVP International training group for the Rana Reider-led Tumbleweed group in Jacksonville, hoping that a change of environment might bring about the change she needed.
“I eventually started to take the positives from last season and knew that eventually, I had to leave the past in the past because it already happened and there was nothing I could do but work on the future. So this is a new chapter and I am just trying to work even harder, stay healthy and apply what I’m learning,” she said.
So far, it seems to be working well.
On April 30, in her first 100m of the season at the UNF Invitational in Jacksonville, she ran a lifetime best of 10.97 to follow up on the 22.57 she ran over 200m two weeks before at the Tom Jones Memorial Invitational in Gainesville.
“I’m really happy with the results as much as you would imagine,” she told Sportsmax.TV afterwards. “I just want to stay patient, continue to work on the many things I can improve on and see what else God has in store for me.”
She does admit, however, that despite the early success, making the move to Tumbleweed to work with Reider was not an easy decision but she believes it was the correct one.
“I have to say making changes is hard but sometimes changes can be good,” she said.
“I have been working on a lot of things and also learning a lot of new things so hopefully putting the new knowledge together will help me reach the goals I have made for myself for this season.”
