SAN ANTONIO – Kentucky’s Raymond Dykstra opened the 2015 outdoor season with a javelin throw that traveled nearly two inches further than the distance it took for him to win the Southeastern Conference Championship last year.

Dykstra’s throw of 252 inches, one inch / 76.83 meters won him the javelin competition on Friday at the University of Texas-San Antonio Challenge Invitational. Dykstra won the 2014 SEC Title with a throw of 250’10″/76.45m and went on to improve that mark to 251′ 8″/76.72m in a Silver Medal performance at the NCAA Championships last year.

His personal best throw is 78.58m was recorded en route to the 2014 Senior Canadian Championship.

For more perspective, Dykstra did not surpass 250-feet last season until April 19.

And Dykstra wasn’t the only UK thrower who had a strong start to the outdoor season on Friday. Rebecca Famurewa won the hammer throw with a best toss that came on her last attempt (196’07″/59.91m).

Famurewa placed fourth at the SEC Championships last season with a throw of 193′ 9″/59.06m.

Through five events of the decathlon, Tim Duckworth has 3,689 points, having won the high jump and Nathan Donnellon is on 3,609 points having won the shot put and 400m.

Ibn Short, who figures to compete in multi-events come the championship portion of the season, placed second in the javelin with a throw of 155’01″/47.26m.

David Cline placed fourth in the hammer throw with a best toss of 182’03″/55.54m. Nikolas Huffman threw 167’10″/51.15m for seventh place.

Saturday action starts with the decathlon at 10:30 p.m. The first running events will get under way on Saturday at 1 p.m.

UTSA, Manhattan, Texas, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Texas Tech are competing at the UTSA Challenge Invitational.