April 16, 2016

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. – The Gamecock track and field team wrapped up their weekend at the Seminole Invitational Saturday afternoon. South Carolina won a pair of events and continued to see strong improvements out of its middle-distance group.

Shelby Freedman notched the team’s first win of the weekend right from the start, leading wire-to-wire in the women’s javelin. The sophomore hit her top mark of 151 feet, seven inches on her final throw to clinch the win over teammate Amy Suttmeier (at 141 feet). Kaleb Zuidema finished second in the men’s javelin, reaching 224 feet, two inches.

Also in the field events, Natasha Dicks hit a new season best to finish second overall in the triple jump. She reached 13.01 meters (42-8 ¼) on her sixth and final jump to finish as the top attached athlete in the field of 19. On the men’s side, Michael Wamer put himself on the cusp of not making the final round of jumps after fouling his first two attempts, but he shot up to fourth overall after reaching 51 feet, 9 ¼ inches on his last preliminary jump and settled in fourth through the finals.

The men’s winner on Saturday came on the track, where Jussi Kanervo reached a season-best in the 400m hurdles to beat out the field. He ran in a time of 50.10, which ranks fifth nationally based on times entering the weekend. In the high hurdles, Dondre Echols continued to gain momentum with a second-place finish in 14.04 seconds with a head wind.

A prevailing theme from the weekend was the development of the distance and middle distance runners. All five of the 1500m runners on the men’s and women’s team reached season highs on Saturday, and all four women reached personal bests as well. The women packed the top 10, led by Alexis Malmberg in fifth place at 4:38.41 that shaved more than six seconds off the team’s previous best time this season.

In the men’s 1500, Alex Sullivan improved by more than six second off his previous 1500 time and finished 12th overall.

Back on the women’s side, Aliyah Abrams improved her time in the quarter mile sprint for the third straight weekend, and flirted with a record time in the process. She finished fourth with a new personal best of 52.79, just seven thousandths of a second away from entering the program’s top 10 for the 400.

In the relays, the Gamecocks made the podium in all but one race on Saturday. For the 4×100, the men placed second overall with a time of 40.29, and the women came third in 45.31. Closing out the meet was the 4x400m relay, the women ran the second-fastest time of the season with a 3:34.40 finish to take second. The men finished fifth in 3:10.96, the team’s third-fastest time of the year.

UP NEXT

The team will have a weekend off to prepare for finals in the classroom as well as the final three meets before the NCAA Outdoor Championships. The regular season ends in two weeks at the historic Penn Relays in Philadelphia, followed by the SEC Championships and the East Regionals.

QUOTABLE: HEAD COACH Curtis Frye

Recapping the Weekend
“We’ve been going hard since Coastal Carolina, so everybody is tired, but we’re looking forward to a break next week before our championship portion of the schedule. We had some great performances this weekend, we had kids step up and do a great job. We’ve trained hard, we’ve raced hard, and rest is important, so next week will be important for us to rest and study for final exams.”

On the performances of the team’s distance runners
“A lot of good things happened for our distance program this weekend. Coach Allden has been bringing them around nicely, we had several personal bests, we had four girls break five minutes in the 1500, we had three girls with personal bests last night in the 5000, we had three guys PR in the 800 ââ’¬” it was just a great weekend for those kids and we’re excited for them.”