Ayden Owens-Delerme - Assistant Coach - Track & Field Coaches

Ayden Owens-Delerme

Title:
Assistant Coach

Ayden Owens-Delerme was hired as an assistant coach for the Duke track and field program in August 2026. In addition to his coaching duties, Owens-Delerme will also handle on-campus recruiting responsibilities.

Owens-Delerme comes to Duke from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he served as an assistant coach from 2024-26. During his time with the Illini, he worked alongside Illinois Director of Track & Field and Cross Country Petros Kyprianou and helped mentor several standout performers including JaiCieonna Gero-Holt, Meagan Humphries and Luuk Pelkmans.

While at Illinois, Owens-Delerme also competed for his home country of Puerto Rico, most recently winning the silver medal in the decathlon at the 2025 World Championships. He also competed in the decathlon during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games and placed ninth overall. The Nike professional athlete claimed the decathlon gold medal at the 2023 Central American and Caribbean Games, the third gold medal of his career.

A decorated collegiate student-athlete, Owens-Delerme competed for Arkansas, Michigan and Southern California. He was a three-time NCAA champion (4x400m, decathlon, heptathlon), two-time SEC champion (400mH, heptathlon), 2021 Big Ten champion (decathlon) and 2019 Pac-12 champion (4x400m). Additionally, the seven-time All-American was the 2022 Bowerman Award runner-up, 2022 NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Field Athlete of the Year, 2022 SEC Field Athlete of the Year, 2021 Big Ten Field Athlete of the Year and 2019 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year.

Owens-Delerme placed fourth at the 2022 World Athletics Championships in the decathlon and published the book "Race of My Own: An Olympian's Quest for Self-Discovery" on July 15, 2024. Along with being an author, he is also the founder and CEO of DapUp LLC, a software platform that connects college athletes with local businesses for marketing campaigns. The former NCAA decathlon record holder is a three-time Puerto Rican national record holder and still owns school records at USC (heptathlon, decathlon), Michigan (heptathlon, decathlon) and Arkansas (heptathlon, decathlon, 4x400m).

A product of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Owens-Delerme graduated in three years from the University of Michigan (2021) and earned his MBA from the University of Arkansas' Sam M. Walton College of Business in 2023.