Feb. 20, 2015
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The final weekend of the indoor regular season kicks off Friday with the Virginia Tech Challenge, one of three meets the Gamecocks will compete in this weekend. The team will also host its final home meet of the season on Saturday, the Gamecock Invitational.
Fans can follow along with the action at Virginia Tech, which starts Friday at 5 p.m. Live results will be available through clicking on this link. Seven athletes on the men’s side are scheduled to compete.
Ncincilili Titi returns to Arkansas this weekend for the Arkansas Open. As the lone Gamecocks at the meet, he will be competing in the 200m, after setting a new collegiate personal best last weekend at Tyson with a time of 21.03.
The majority of the team will remain at home for the Gamecock Invitational. The meet welcomes in local schools for a one-day competition, beginning with field events at 9 a.m. and running events at noon.
The Gamecocks got their first look at some of the nation’s best talent last weekend, competing at the Tyson Invitational in Arkansas. The team accounted for 13 finishers in the top 15 of their respective events, season-best times in six events, and seven marks that rank among the top 33 nationally. Five of those marks would come from the men’s side, boosting them all the way up to No. 24 on the USTFCCCA’s weekly top 25 poll.
In total, the men vaulted 34 spots in the poll to make the top 25 for the first time since week six of the 2010 indoor season. Five different Gamecocks earned top 25 times on the national level, highlighted by Jermaine Collier’s seventh-fastest time in the 60-meter hurdles. His time of 7.76 gives the team two in the top ten nationally, joining Dondre Echols’ second-fastest time of 7.72, and four hurdlers are now among the top 21 in the country. Freshman Isaiah Moore (14th) and Jussi Kanervo (21st) round out what could be a high-scoring event for the team at nationals.
Along with Collier and the hurdlers, Clayton Gravesande ran the 25th-fastest 400 in the country, coming just .08 from matching his personal best. He then followed that up by running the first leg of the 4×400 relay team that ran the 23rd-fastest time in the country.
For the women, Tyler Brockington ran a new personal best in the 200m, crossing with a time of 23.67 to run the 28th-fastest 200 in the country for 2015. Though she would miss out on qualifying for the finals in the 60 hurdles, Chalese Davis set a top ten time in the event, with a new personal record time of 8.37 that also qualifies her as a scorer in the USTFCCCA poll.
In the distance events, Anna Todd beat her personal best in the mile run by almost four seconds, finishing sixth with a time of 4:49.46. She replaces herself on the program’s top ten list, moving in at number three all-time. She now sits in the top ten in four different events for the indoor season (800m, 1000m, Mile, 3000m).
This weekend’s captains will be a pair of seniors, Chris Walker and Chalese Davis. Walker is a sports and entertainment management major from Bowie, Md. and specializes in sprints. Davis is a multi-event athlete from Hercules, Calif., majoring in public health.
