Rested, recovered and rust-free, No. 1 Florida is gunning to sweep the 2011 national championships.
That mission begins at the Pepsi Florida Relays this weekend at Percy Beard Track at James G. Pressly Stadium in Gainesville.
“Anytime you’re competing at home and sleeping in your own bed, it’s an advantage,” UF coach Mike Holloway said. “But you’ve still go to line up and put a great effort out there.”
The outdoor season’s first two meets — both at UCF — were tune-up competitions to gauge where the Gators were competitively.
And after a school record and seven combined victories between the men’s and women’s squads, UF seems ready to get the season started.
“We just wanted to see some of our athletes compete, and we did that,” Holloway said. “We saw some good things, saw some things we needed to work on, but overall, I thought it was a pretty successful weekend.”
That success included the school record set by Jeremy Postin in the hammer throw this weekend.
“Jeremy Postin is a guy that walked on and didn’t even know what the hammer was three years ago,” Holloway said. “After four years of being in the program, I think it’s a great accomplishment for Jeremy.”
Postin’s mark at UCF (64.70m/212-3) broke his previous school record (60.58m/198-9), which he set last season at the Tom Jones Memorial Classic.
“All of the hard work that he put in indoors and leading up to outdoors showed immediate results,” throws coach Steve Lemke said. “We are expecting big things from him this season.”
Another worthy accomplishment for Florida at the UCF Invitational came from freshman distance runner Matt Mizerick, who won two events in his collegiate track debut.
Mizerick won the 1,500-meter run in 3:52.93 then picked up his second victory in the 800-meter run, clinching the event with a time of 1:51.88.
“It’s always a good thing when an athlete goes out and wins, but for us, it was important for us to see Matt go out and compete at a high level,” Holloway said. “There may have been some people out there who were surprised about what he did, but we weren’t surprised at all by what Matt did.”
