Florida coach Mike Holloway says the Gators are gunning for the 2011 national championship this season, not defending their 2010 crown.
After a weekend that saw eight Florida track and field athletes post automatic-qualifying marks, the Gators have made that perfectly clear.
One Gator who added to his NCAA Indoor Championships workload was jumper Will Claye, who automatically qualified in the long jump with a fourth-place finish Friday.
“I wasn’t expecting to jump that far,” Claye said.
Claye recorded a 7.95m/26-1 mark in the long jump, but The Bowerman award candidate’s triple jump effort may have been even more impressive.
Claye posted a 17.02m/55-10.25 mark, the second-best effort in school history.
Sprinter Tony McQuay enjoyed a successful weekend as well, recording an automatic-qualifying mark in the 400-meter dash Friday and nearly doing the same in the 200-meter dash Saturday.
“I was kind of surprised at my time because I haven’t really been training as hard as I have in the past because I pulled my hamstring,” McQuay said.
In addition to Claye and McQuay, sprinter Jeff Demps posted an automatic-qualifying mark in the 60-meter dash Saturday, finishing second in 6.58 seconds.
Meanwhile, distance runner Dumisane Hlaselo made school history Saturday in Seattle, as he became the first Gator to ever run a sub-four-minute mile. Hlaselo ran the mile in 3:56.84, earning a trip to the national meet along with women’s distance runner Cory McGee.
McGee ran her mile in 4:36.53, which was a personal record for the freshman.
“Definitely the two highlights,” distance coach Todd Morgan said. “A lot of good things happened in about a 15-minute span.”
