Feb. 13, 2015
FAYETTEVILLE, ARK. – The Gamecock track and field team will get an early look at its competition at the SEC Indoor Championships, as it travels to Arkansas for the two-day Tyson Invitational. Not only will the meet feature ten conference rivals, but also 13 of the top 25 women’s teams and 13 of the top 25 men’s teams in the country.
There will be plenty of ways to follow along with the action, which starts Friday at 2 p.m. EST. Live results will be available through clicking this link. Then on Saturday, the SEC+ Network will carry the event right when it starts at 1 p.m. EST. The live coverage can be found on the WatchESPN site and the WatchESPN app for your phone and tablet.
Last weekend, the team opened the month at home with the USC Open. The one-day meet allowed the Gamecocks to rest some key athletes as well as give their multis a chance to hone their skills ahead of the SEC and NCAA indoor championships to come.
The team would take home eight titles in the 24 total events, and had 24 others finish in the top three of their respective events. Chalese Davis was one of those winners, taking the 55m hurdle title with a time of 7.89 in the finals. That shattered her personal best, set back in 2013. The senior would also take second in the long jump, fifth in the high jump and seventh in the shot put as she prepares for future competition in the pentathlon.
Fellow pentathlete Sarah Graham had top-five finishes in the 55 hurdles, long jump, high jump and shot put. In the distance runs, the Gamecock women would win three titles, with Ashley Miller taking the 800m (2:24.63), Anna McElrath tallying her first collegiate win in the mile (5:26.84) and Sarah Falta winning the 3000m (10:51.85) in her first time running the event as a college athlete. Carolina would have at least two finishers in the top three for all three events.
In the field events, Megan Wall won the women’s pole vault comfortably with a height of 12 feet, 1 1/2 inches. Nakita Gray continues to rack up the win in the high jump, again winning a weekend title with a jump of five feet, 9 3/4 inches. Now through five meets, Gray has won three times, finished second for the other two, and only has one mark that doesn’t qualify as one of the top-ten marks in program history for the event.
On the men’s side, Jussi Kanervo edged out four other teammates to win the 55m hurdles. He shaved almost a full tenth of a second off his preliminary time to win in the finals with a time of 7.36. That just beat out Dondre Echols’ time of 7.40 and came just a few hundredths of a second from recording a top-ten time in program history. In the distance events, Daniel Novak crossed first in the 800m, beating teammates David Yang (2:03.99, new personal best) and Greg Lowing (2:05.96) with a time of 2:03.01.
Clarence Gallop would be the top collegiate competitor in the weight throw, with his toss of 18.09 meters beating his teammate Josh Awotunde by less than two feet. Awotunde would finish second in the shot put (17.22m).
In the weekly USTFCCCA regional rankings, the men still reign as the top team in the southeast region, while the women rank fifth. On the indoor qualifying list published by TFRRS, 11 different Gamecocks rank in the top 25 of their respective events and 13 others rank in the top 50.
Serving as captains this weekend will be Clayton Gravesande, Jermaine Collier, Chalese Davis and Anna Todd. Gravesande is an advertising major from Somerset, N.J., and Collier, a fellow Garden State native, is a Sociology major from Trenton. Davis is a public health major from Hercules, Calif. and Todd is a pharmacy major from Spartanburg.
