LAST TIME OUT – GLENN HIGHLIGHTS NCAA INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS

The Gamecocks enter the outdoor season on the heels of one of the program’s best NCAA Indoor Championships in recent past. The Carolina women finished tied for 20th, the third time since 2014 they have finished among the top 20 indoors with the highest finish coming in 2019 when the team finished seventh. The Gamecock men tied for 46th. 

The highlight of the meet was Carolina’s national runner-up in the women’s high jump with freshman Rachel Glenn. Her 1.87m (6-1 1/2) was just shy of the national champion mark of 1.90m. Glenn set three personal records during the incredible meet to nearly reach the top of the podium in her national championship debut. Glenn came into the meet ranked near the bottom of the qualifiers with a 1.80m, but used the third-best high jump mark, indoors or outdoors, in school history to snag eight points at the indoor national meet for Carolina. 

Glenn’s finish was one of three events that captured first-team All-America honors during the weekend. The women’s 4x400m relay team of Knowledge Omovoh, Glenn, Ashton Lindley and Stephanie Davis finished the meet with a seventh-place finish. For Glenn it gave her two first-team honors while it made Davis the 26th female in school history to earn five different All-American laurels. 

Filip Demsar was the final first-team All-American, and the only male to earn the distinction in 2021. Demsar qualified near the bottom of the 16 participants coming into the meet but used a PR of 7.74 to reach the final. Demsar matched his new PR of 7.74 in the final to catapult him to a sixth-place finish, snagging three points for Carolina and earning a third-straight All-America nod for the Gamecocks in the 60m hurdles. 

PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP (click to expand)

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CAROLINA’S LAST OUTDOOR COMPETITION

The Tiger Track Classic will be the first outdoor competition for the Gamecocks since June 8, 2019, when the Gamecocks wrapped up the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Austin, Texas. The last regular season meet for Carolina was all the way back on April 27, 2019, at the Penn Relays. Since then the Gamecocks have only had the chance to run indoors due to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused the cancellation of last outdoor season. 
 

RETURNING OUTDOOR GAMECOCKS

A number of Gamecocks will have the opportunity to return to the outdoor scene after last year’s cancellations. At the Tiger Track Classic South Carolina will enjoy the return of seven student-athletes that were not able to compete during indoor season after exhausting their eligibility. Aliyah Abrams will be one of the highlighted names for the Garnet and Black, the NCAA 400m runner-up and NCAA champion in the 4x400m relay has trained all indoor season and was even able to compete as an unattached athlete during the indoor season. 

Other individuals returning this weekend include Adele Blalock in the pole vault, Jordan Fields in the high jump, Sarah-Sims McGrath and Anna Kathryn Stoddard in the distances, Jhari Williams in the sprints and Noah Walker in the sprints and hurdles. The Gamecocks eventually will see the return of Eric Favors in the shot put and Hanifah Abdulqadir in the triple jump. 

GAMECOCKS PACE THE SEC IN FALL ACADEMIC HONOR ROLL

The 2021 Fall SEC Academic Honor Roll was announced on February 9, 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.

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