Anchored by a strong showing from its distance runners, the UF women’s track and field team won the three-day Southeastern Conference Indoor Championship Meet in Fayetteville, Ark., beating the hosts, Arkansas, by 28 points and capturing its first SEC title since 2004.
Distance events also proved to be the difference in the men’s team’s second-place showing. With three events remaining, Arkansas scored 17 team points in the 5,000-meter run and 10 team points in the distance medley relay to give them a four-point victory over the Gators.
“I am extremely proud of the Florida track and field program as a whole,” UF coach Mike Holloway said. “I have an incredible coaching staff and they do a phenomenal job of making sure our athletes are prepared. We’re having success, but we can’t rest on our laurels in this league. We have to come back and keep fighting.”
The UF women took control of the meet in the last event of the second day, racking up 24 of their 110 team points in the 3,000-meter run. Charlotte Browning, in her first attempt in the event during the 2010 season, won the race in 9:21:77.
The Gators placed four runners in the top eight of the 3K, with Rebecca Lowe finishing third, Genevieve LaCaze fourth and Stacey Johnson sixth.
In the mile finals on Sunday, Browning captured another first-place finish, giving the Gators 10 more team points.
She was given the Cliff Harper Trophy as the league’s high point scorer with 20, sharing the award with teammate Shara Proctor.
As expected, Proctor won the triple jump and long jump easily, jumping 13.48 and 6.47m, respectively. Along with Mariam Kevkhishvili’s first-place 18.09-meter throw in the shot put and Keely Medeiros’ third-place 16.39, Florida recorded 36 team points in field events.
On the men’s side, the Gators took a 90-89 lead over the Razorbacks with Kemal Mesic’s first-place throw of 18.62 in the shot put.
But Arkansas overcame strong performances by UF’s sprinters and throwers by dominating the distance events to secure the SEC Championship with 123 team points.
After the Razorbacks won the distance medley, they took a 12-point, title-clinching lead over the Gators with only the 4x400 relay remaining in the meet.
Florida won the relay, cutting Arkansas’ lead to four and capping a solid showing.
Christian Taylor ran the second leg of the gold-medal winning relay, finished third in the long jump at 7.79 meters and won the triple jump at 16.83, scoring 26 of the Gators’ 119 team points.
Calvin Smith, who ran the anchor leg in the 4x400, also scored 26 points. He won the 200 in an NCAA automatic-qualifying time of 20.73 seconds and finished third in the 400, running a NCAA-qualifying 45.61.
Sprinters Jeff Demps, Jeremy Hall and Terrell Wilks finished second, third and sixth, respectively in the 60-meter dash to give UF 17 team points.
Gray Horn finished second in the heptathlon with a personal-best 5,653 points, and Justin Taylor finished second in the mile at 4:06:17.
Freshman Omar Craddock landed an NCAA automatic-qualifying 16.19 in the triple jump, good for third place.
Internet reports contributed to this story.
