GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of South Carolina track & field team opened its week at the 2019 Florida Relays late Thursday night with five student-athletes competing in the 5000m. Distance stars Anna Kathryn Stoddard and Heather Stone shone brightest under the Percy Beard Track lights, running the best 5K times of their collegiate careers.

Stoddard and Stone finished third and fourth, respectively, in the women’s 5000m. Stoddard’s time of 16:52.76 ranks fourth in South Carolina program history and eighth on the 2019 NCAA leaderboard. Stone ran 16:57.46, the sixth-best run on the Gamecock records list and the 10th-best effort in the NCAA this season.

This is the seventh different occasion that Stoddard has posted a Carolina top-10 mark in 2019. The junior from Greenwood, S.C., ran the program’s seventh-fastest times in both the 3000m and the 5000m during the indoor season, and she was part of three different quartets that logged top-10 times in the distance medley relay. The last of those, an effort of 11:38.69, was good for No. 2 in program history and a fifth-place finish at the SEC Indoor Championships.

Two weeks ago, at the Black and Gold Challenge in Orlando, Stoddard notched a 1500m time of 4:34.23, the ninth-best run in Gamecock history. Stone, meanwhile, posted her first-career Carolina top-10 track effort Thursday night in the second race of her sophomore season.

Three other Gamecocks were in action on Thursday. In the women’s 5000m, Colleen Openshaw finished 27th with a time of 17:37.67, and Brooke Wilson placed 39th, running 18:08.60. On the men’s side, Carson Strom’s time of 15:03.42 was good for 33rd.

UP NEXT FOR THE GAMECOCKS

The Florida Relays begin in earnest on Friday, with the first Gamecock in action at 11:30 a.m. ET. SEC Network+ subscribers can watch a live stream of the action beginning at 1 p.m. ET.