March 31, 2004

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina’s Lashinda Demus was named by the SEC as its Female Track Athlete of the Week after posting the world’s leading 400m hurdles time in her Friday victory at Gainesville, Fla. The honor marks the second consecutive week that a USC athlete has earned a weekly conference award.

Demus ran a time of 55.50 to win the 400m hurdles at this weekend’s Florida Relays, setting a meet record in the process. The time was an NCAA automatic qualifying mark and the third-fasteest outdoor 400m hurdles time by a USC female athlete. Demus owns the school-record time of 54.70, set in 2002.

Demus also ran on USC’s victorious 4x200m and 4x400m relay teams last weekend in Gainesville.

The junior from Palmdale, Calif., was also part of two victorious relay teams for USC during the weekend, running on the 4x400m and 4x200m champions. She recorded an automatic time of 11.39 in the 100m preliminaries to advance to the event finals.

Demus becomes the first Carolina female athlete and third Gamecock overall to earn SEC weekly honors during the 2004 season. Earlier this season, Fred Townsend earned the conference’s Male Track Athlete of the Week during indoor competition and last week Tony Allmond garnered an outdoor accolade as Male Field Athlete of the Week.

The Carolina men’s and women’s track and field teams begin their busiest stretch of the season with three meets in one week beginning Saturday at Georgia Tech. USC hosts its final home meet of the season with the South Carolina State Championships on April 7 before traveling to the Sea Ray Relays on April 9-10 in Knoxville, Tenn.