Early in her track and field career, Monay James couldn't decided on what she wanted to concentrate on. Was she going to be a sprinter or run the distances. Maybe a hurdler or a jumper. She could concentrate on throwing.

"I was a jack-of-all-trades." Monay recalled recently. "I wasn't real great at any one event but I could do a lot of things."

That all changed when she left Thomas Dale High School and enrolled in the College of William and Mary and joined the Tribe's track team.

"I had a coach suggest that I combine them together and compete in the pentathlon and heptathlon."

It wasn't long before Monay was one of the top performers in the sport.

The pentathlon consists of five sports – 60-meter hurdlers, high jump, shot put, and the 800 meters – and is contested indoors. The heptathlon is made of seven events – 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200-meter dash, long jump, javelin, and 800-meter run – and is run outdoors.

In both regimens, competitors earn points based on their finishes.

After graduating in three years, Monay brought her talents to Winthrop and again has become one of the top competitors in the Big South Conference.

Monay will be seeking to make her third All-BSC team when the Eagles head to High Point University.

She wasn't in Rock Hill long before she put her name in the Winthrop record books. In her first BSC outdoor meet, she posted 4,482 points to become the first Eagle to finish in the top three in the heptathlon since Taryn Deleon in 2017. And she's just the third Winthrop athlete to finish in the top three in school history.

Monay didn't rest on her laurels. Back in February, she finished in second place in the BSC indoor championships with 3,338 points to earn her second all-conference spot.

So how does she manage training for all the various sports and stay on top of academics?

"It's all in time management," Monay said. "You have a schedule and manage your time."

Does she have a favorite event?

"I'd say now it's the hurdles and long jump," the computer science major said. "It was the long jump, but that hasn't been going well lately."

Monay said she chose Winthrop after leaving the second-oldest university in the United States because it was one of the few schools that offered the courses and degree she wanted.

In a humorous aside, when Monay thought she saw a familiar face jogging. It was her former William and Mary teammate Olivia Paxton.

"She told me she lived in Rock Hill and had run at Winthrop," Monay said. "Then she told me she was Coach (Ben) Paxton's daughter. I couldn't believe it."