LAST TIME OUT – WEEMS BASKIN

The University of South Carolina track and field team earned seven total victories during the 2021 Weems Baskin that concluded on March 27 at Creggar Track. Anna Kathryn Stoddard’s broke the school record in the 3000m on Saturday, a record that also goes down as the facility record. 

“Today we just saw a huge improvement across our entire team from last week to this week,” South Carolina head coach Curtis Frye said. “I’m thrilled with AK’s performance today, and honestly both of those girls in the 3000m. They almost ran at the Raleigh Relays but we kept them here because it might be too hot for them up there. We made an adjustment and put them in this event today, it wasn’t planned, but for them to adapt like that is great for us as we move forward and they shift their focus to events that could help us at the conference meet down the road.”

Stoddard’s time of 9:29.72 was an impressive one that was done through hot track conditions. The senior fought through to crush the previous school record by 14 seconds, a record that was held for 27 years by Tracey Capper. Arguably more notable is that Stoddard’s time is the 35th-fastest time in the world this year, according to the IAAF website.  

Throughout the meet the Gamecocks had a number of quality performances with Evan Miller’s 200m time being one of them. Miller, fresh off his 200m All-America honor, ran his first outdoor open in the event since 2019 on Saturday. Miller clocked a 20.50, the sixth-fastest time in school history, to finish as the meet’s runner-up. 

PROJECTED STARTING LINEUP (click to expand)

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ABRAMS NAMED SEC CO-RUNNER OF THE WEEK

The University of South Carolina opening weekend of outdoor action led to senior sprint Aliyah Abrams named the SEC Runner of the Week laurels on March 23, the conference office announced.
 
Abrams turned in a 400m time of 52.01 at the Tiger Track Classic in Auburn, Ala., which still sits atop the NCAA East Region lists after two weeks of outdoor track and field competition. Later that afternoon Abrams anchored the women’s 4x400m relay team that currently has the fastest time in the East Region this season with Abrams’ anchor leg clocking in with a sub-52 split. The honor is the first weekly conference honor for Carolina since the 2019 season when the Gamecocks won seven SEC Athlete of the Week laurels. For Abrams it is her fourth conference honor of her career at South Carolina. 

MEET INFORMATION

Attendance will be limited to coaches, support staff, student-athletes and athletes’ family and guests. Additional fan attendance will be assessed each day depending on the capacity for the day. Should capacity guidelines permit, a limited amount of tickets will be available to the general public at no cost on a first-come-first-serve basis at the gate. Fans are advisted to tune in to @GatorsTF for updates regarding ticket availability. 
 
Fans can follow the meet live on DeltaTiming here. The meet begins on Friday at 2 p.m. and at 10 a.m. on Saturday.

GAMECOCK WOMEN RANKED IN LATEST POLL

The University of South Carolina women’s track and field team came in to the first outdoor USTFCCCA rankings at No. 12. The ranking for the women’s team, who had a stellar weekend at the Weems Baskin, is the highest during the 2020-21 season. The ranking is aided by the return of a number of student-athletes who only had a year of outdoor eligability remaining. Anna Kathryn Stoddard, Aliyah Abrams, Jordan Fields and more have had impacts already this season and have helped the Carolina reach their No. 12 ranking. 

The SEC women have a total of nine teams inside the top 25 with four of those ranked teams competing at the Florida Relays this weekend. 
 

LAST TIME AT THE FLORIDA RELAYS (2019)

The last Florida Relays, that were contested in 2019, the University of South Carolina’s 4x400m relay squads rose to the occasion. The top highlight came from the women’s quarter-milers, who posted the fastest time in the NCAA this season with a thunderous come-from-behind victory over the host Gators in front of a raucous crowd at Percy Beard Track.

The men’s 4×4 squad also brought their A-game in 2019, finishing fourth in the Jimmy Carnes 4x400m Relay. Arinze Chance, Otis Jones, Quincy Hall and Ty Jaye Robbins logged a time of 3:04.08. Most importantly, that mark ranked fifth in the NCAA at the time and eighth in the world at the time, and it’s also the eighth-best mark in Gamecock history.
 

TIGER TRACK CLASSIC – MARCH 19-20

A portion of the Gamecocks began their outdoor season last weekend at the Tiger Track Classic in Auburn, Ala. The Gamecocks picked up five victories during the meet with All-Americans Filip Demsar and Aliyah Abrams highlighting the weekend. 

“I’m really happy we got going today with some good runs and performances,” South Carolina head coach Curtis Frye said. “Our team knows the urgency of the season because not every day is guaranteed. Having Filip [Demsar] get out and put up a solid time and Malik [Paul] putting up just a solid marks. Those are really great starts for them and then Aliyah [Abrams] in her open and also her split on the 4x400m team was just fantastic. I’m proud of the whole group and especially those marks.” 

Demsar began his outdoor career with a 13.77 in the 110m hurdles to win the meet. Demsar’s time was good enough to put him among the top five in the nation in the first weekend of the outdoor season. For Abrams, in her first action with Carolina since the 2019 SEC Indoor Championships, clocked an impressive 52.01 in the 400m to easily win the event. Abrams wasn’t finished with a 51.1 split in the 4x400m relay later in the afternoon that helped the team finish second at the Tiger Track Classic. 

In the field it was Malik Paul who highlighted the weekend for Carolina. Paul earned the victory in the discus event with a toss of 56.63m (185-9), a new personal record for the senior. The mark also propelled Paul to ninth on the Gamecocks all-time top 10 outdoor list in the event, a list that he previously sat 10th on. Hailey Sweatman was also victorious in the women’s pole vault for the Gamecocks on Saturday. The 2020 All-American cleared 4.15m (13-7 1/4), a season-best mark indoors or outdoors, to earn the first victory in her 2021 season. Finally the men’s 4x400m relay got off on the right foot with a 3:09.32 with the team of Evan Miller, EJ Richardson, Jackson Junkins and William Spencer Jr., winning the meet handily. 

GLENN HIGHLIGHTS 2021 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.

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