LAST TIME OUT – USC INDOOR OPEN FEB. 13

Carolina concluded the indoor regular season at the USC Indoor Open with positive momentum before the conference and national meets. The Gamecocks picked up 11 victories at the Carolina Indoor Track and Field Complex with Filip Demsar, Jackson Marseille and Stephon Torrence all slightly improving their national marks in the 60m hurdles and high jump, respectively. 

“It’s good to finish up the indoor season with some positive momentum,” South Carolina head coach Curtis Frye said. “I’m very pleased today, we had some good performances. We saw some awesome performances from [Blake] Newcomb and Mason [Joiner] today, they train extremely hard. Seeing as we don’t have men’s cross country, but we still keep talented distance runners in our program, and often they are local kids. To have the kinds of personal best times they had, not to just participate but to excel and get into the top 10 at your school is a great thing for a young person to hang on their wall and motivate them throughout their lives. I’m proud of those young men for the efforts they put in.” 

Among Carolina’s 11 victories, three managed to improve on their season-best marks to improve their SEC and national ranking. Blake Newcomb dropped a 1:51.81 to win the 800m, slightly improving his lifetime best he set back in 2020 and putting him right on the edge of the top 24 in the SEC this season. Knowledge Omovoh also clocked a personal record in the 400m with her 54.16, putting her 36th in the country and 19th in the SEC this season. Heather Stone’s victory in the 5000m in 17:08.37 also improved the graduate student’s SEC ranking, putting her at No. 20 among the conference’s top distance indoor performances this season.     

PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP (click to expand)

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GAMECOCKS AT THE SEC CHAMPIONSHIPS

Last season the SEC Championships eventually turned into the final action for many of the Gamecocks due to the cancellation of the remainder of the track and field season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stephanie Davis was the lone Gamecock to earn a medal at the meet, finishing second in the 400m and returning to Columbia with her first individual conference medal. Davis was joined by six other returning Gamecocks that will compete at the 2021 SEC Championships this week. The other highest returning scorer for Carolina is Malik Paul who finished fourth in last year’s weight throw competition. The men’s 4x400m relay squad finished fourth last year as well with three of the four members (Richardson, Spencer Jr., Leacock) returning to the conference championships this week. Last season the Gamecocks finished in 11th on the men’s side and 12th on the women’s side. 

Since joining the Southeastern Conference in 1991 the Gamecocks have won a combined 25 men’s titles and 22 women’s titles. The last championship coming in 2019 when then-junior Quincy Hall won the 400m title to begin his reign at the top of the SEC 400m. Hall’s winning time of 45.69 in 2019 made him the first Gamecock in history to win a men’s indoor 400m SEC title and the first Carolina student-athlete to win an SEC title on the indoor track since Jason Richardson took the 60m hurdles crown in 2009. 
 

SEC CHAMPIONSHIPS TO BE BROADCASTED

Fans will be able to watch the 2021 SEC Indoor Championships at some point during every day of competition. The SEC Network + broadcasts can be viewed on the ESPN app on smart devices and also watched on desktop and laptops with a valid subscription. The broadcast windows are as follows for SEC Network +: Thursday starting at 11 a.m., Friday from 12:55 p.m. – 6 p.m. and 6:25 p.m. – 10 p.m. and Saturday from 1:25 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. and 6:55 p.m. – 9 p.m. There will also be a tape delay broadcast on Sunday on SEC Network from 8 p.m. until 11 p.m. 

MEET INFORMATION

The 2021 SEC Indoor Championships will take place at the Randal Tyson Indoor Track Center in Fayetteville, Ark. The facility has served as the site of the SEC Indoor Track and Field Championships nine times. For more information on the competition schedule, defending champions and more, click here.

GAMECOCKS PACE THE SEC IN FALL ACADEMIC HONOR ROLL

The 2021 Fall SEC Academic Honor Roll was announced on Tuesday by commissioner Greg Sankey. South Carolina had 115 student-athletes across five sports make the list, the third year in a row reaching triple digits. That total also leads the conference, marking the 13^th time in the last 15 years that the Gamecocks led the way in fall honor roll members. The Cross Country team posted it’s fourth-highest GPA in history with a 3.489 team GPA with 24 individuals from the team earning Academic Honor Roll status. 
 
In total, 1,263 SEC student-athletes earned a place on the honor roll, based on grades from the 2020 Spring, Summer and Fall terms. The South Carolina Athletics Department as a whole concluded the Fall 2020 semester with a departmental grade point average (GPA) of 3.299. It marks the department’s fifth-highest GPA in history and the 28th-consecutive semester with a departmental GPA above 3.0. Fourteen of 18 teams earned a GPA of 3.0 or better during the fall semester.

SOUTH CAROLINA INVITATIONAL FEB. 5-6

The University of South Carolina track and field team wrapped up an impressive weekend of competition on Feb. 6, at the South Carolina Invitational with nine different facility records going down. The combination of William Spencer Jr., EJ Richardson, Jackson Junkins and Bailey Rogers trimmed down their national time to a 3:07.95, which was highlighted by another impressive performance from Rogers who clocked a split of 46.39 as the anchor leg along with Richardson who’s split of 46.59 put Carolina in a good position after two legs of the race. 

It was the Filip Demsar show in the 60m hurdles, claiming the victory over teammate Stephon Torrence who made his home debut on Saturday. Demsar’s winning time of 7.81 is tied the eighth-fastest time in the country this season and helped him edge the likes of Clemson’s Lafranz Campbell who was ranked 11th in the nation, and ahead of Demsar, coming into the weekend. Torrence’s time of 7.88 was not good enough to win, but instead it gives him the 18th fastest time in the nation this year in his home debut. 

“To see Filip [Demsar] become as consistent as he has been has been phenomenal,” Frye said. “The next step for him is taking that next step to becoming an All-American. When you can run 7.80 back-to-back like he has done now, that puts him in a great spot moving forward. Stephon’s 7.88 is a good start. We’ve seen him be very dominant in practice so to see him come out and put down a time after a false start last weekend was a great sign. Putting these little things together as we get closer to the conference meet is really going to be a huge difference.”    

BOB POLLOCK MEET JAN. 29-30

The Gamecocks traveled for the first time during the 2021 indoor season when they traveled to the Bob Pollock Meet in Clemson, S.C. Senior Destinee Rocker (60m hurdles) and sophomore William Spencer Jr. (400m) led the way on the opening day of competition with outstanding individual performances that put both of them inside the top 20 in the country in their respective events. Then on Saturday Carolina finished up the meet in style with a pair of top-five national times in the 4x400m relay. Led by a season-debut from Stephanie Davis on the women’s side and William Spencer Jr. and EJ Richardson on the men’s side the Gamecocks took home the collegiate victories in the 4x400m relay. 

“Our team did a great job adjusting to competing on the road,” South Carolina head coach Curtis Frye said. “I would hate to be going to the conference meet and never have the change to get away from our home environment. It was a ton of fun this weekend, our women are running a bit better every week. Getting Stephanie [Davis] out for her first run of the season was a great step forward for her. We look forward to getting her out for another one next weekend back at home. Next week is going to be a great week to wind up everyone with just two more contests before the conference meet. It’ll be great to get back home and really get ready to roll.”   

CAROLINA CHALLENGE JAN. 23

The Gamecocks hosted the Carolina Challenge, the second home meet of the 2021 indoor season, with six Power 5 teams visiting Columbia for the high-quality meet that ended up breaking 10 facility records. 

The Gamecocks saw four individuals either move up or improve their all-time program top-10 marks during the meet. Heather Stone’s 9:51.88 performance in the 3000m moved her the No. 6 on the list, breaking her previous indoor PR by about four seconds. Freshman Christian Lewis improved his PR by nearly six inches during the men’s long jump to finish in third, pushing his sixth-best leap in school history slightly up the all-time top-list. KD Young’s mark of 17.79m in the weight throw cemented her spot at No. 10 on the Gamecocks’ indoor list while Destinee Rocker’s second-place 60m hurdles time of 8.19 separated herself from teammate Caitlyn Little at the No. 6 spot in school history. 

Carolina’s women’s 400m squad proved why it is still one of the deepest groups in the country with a 4x400m relay time of 3:36.19, winning the event over the likes of Florida, Mississippi State, Alabama and Auburn. Led off by returning All-American Knowledge Omovoh, the freshman group of Alysia Johnson, Rachel Glenn and Ashton Lindley combined to post the ninth-fastest time, at the time, in the country.  

GAMECOCK OPENER JAN. 16

The Gamecocks kicked off the 2021 campaign with an impressive outing at the Gamecock Opener. Carolina posted six different All-Time Top 10 program marks during the meet, with three of those performances coming among the jumps events.

“I am so proud of all of our jumpers today. We were all just so excited to be back in this building and competing today,” Assistant Head Coach Delethea Quarles said. “The things that stood out was [Jackson Marseille]’s performance in the high jump today, jumping over seven feet and then Rachel Glenn coming out and jumped just under six feet. They just did a phenomenal job today. All of our jumpers did a great job to execute today and were coachable and made adjustments that were needed to perform at a high level today.”

The Gamecocks also saw top-10 program performances from Destinee Rocker in the 60m hurdles (8.21), Alycia Springs in the Shot Put (16.01m) and KD Young in the Weight Throw (17.70m). 

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