Jan. 31, 2016

Complete Results

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. || UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. – A busy day from senior Dondre Echols and a win from Michael Wamer highlighted the end of South Carolina track and field’s weekend at the Camel City Invite Saturday afternoon. Also winding down was the men’s heptathlon competition at the Penn State National, where Markus Leemet and Alexandre Asselin were in contention from start to finish.

Echols pulled double duty on Saturday, competing in the 60m dash as well as his standard 60m hurdles race. Despite not having experience as a 60m sprinter, Echols found himself as the eighth and final qualifier for the finals. He would ultimately place sixth in the finals, third among collegiate athletes, with a time of 6.92.

The two 60s would warm him up for his main event, the 60 hurdles. He would qualify seventh with a time of 7.84, putting him into a talented field of professionals for the final. The senior would step his game up in a big way, moving all the way up to third in the finals with a new season-best of 7.74 seconds. He placed ahead of Olympic gold medalist Ashton Eaton as well as Gamecock legend and 2012 Olympic silver medalist Jason Richardson. His time currently ranks fifth nationally based on times coming into the weekend

“Dondre ran a lot of races this weekend, getting his speed and rhythm together, he ran in five races between the hurdles and the 60 and that allowed him to get in a lot of good speed work in,” head coach Curtis Frye said. “Him being able to hang in there with that level of athletes is phenomenal. It shows what kind of condition we’re in.”

Michael Wamer also had a productive day, bringing home the win in the men’s triple jump. His second mark of 49 feet, 10 inches held up as the top among 30 competitors, giving him his first win of the season in the event.

For the women at Camel City, Funlayo Oluwole was the top finisher in the team’s lone individual event, finishing 11th in the prelims of the 60m hurdles. The 4x400m relay team of Aliyah Abrams, Ahtyana Johnson, Maya Evans and Oluwole ran second overall at 3:47.23.

Up at the Penn State National it was the final day for the men’s heptathlon, with Markus Leemet and Alexandre Asselin chasing Stanford’s Harrison Williams for the overall lead through the first four events. Leemet would beat out his teammate in all three events on day two and set a season best in the 60m hurdles. He finished fourth overall at 5,249 points. Asselin would not be far behind, picking up 5,051 points to break into the program’s top 10 list. His score puts him sixth in school history, passing Eddie Stoudemire’s 2009 score of 5,016.

QUOTABLE: HEAD COACH Curtis Frye

Opening thoughts on the weekend at the Camel City Invite
“The point of going to this meet (Camel City Invite) was to get our hurdlers involved with that elite group of people, and through that get our kids moving in the right direction heading into next weekend (at the Armory Collegiate). “

Other takeaways from Camel City
“I think Funlayo (Oluwole) running back-to-back 8.50s in the hurdles was really good. Hurdling was what we went there to do, and some of our hurdlers reacted to the gun and being in that kind of contest we found out that we still have some work to do.”

Thoughts on the team’s weekend up at Penn State
“We got some things done, Chalese Davis had a great weekend. It’s a good step, it’s not where we want to be but it’s a place to start from. Our overall team is built around these multis, so we have to put more importance on getting them around 5700 points. They didn’t have a tremendous meet, but they all still look like good scorers at the conference meet.”

UP NEXT

The full team will ramp up intensity as the Armory Track Invitational begins the home stretch towards the conference championship. The event, held at the historic Armory indoor facility in New York City, runs Feb. 5-6 and will feature not only top collegiate programs, but many international teams and high-profile track and field pros.