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After nine second-place finishes to start Florida's split squad
weekend, the Gators track and field teams finally notched a win on
their second day of action.
At the Drake Relays in Des Moines, Iowa, women's thrower Keely
Medeiros extended the Gators' runner-up streak with a toss in the
shot put, finishing just short of Tia Brooks of Oklahoma.
The Brazilian senior, however, rebounded from the close loss with a
dominating performance in the discus.
Medeiros bested her previous personal-record she set two weeks ago
at the Tom Jones Memorial Classic, winning Friday with a throw of
54.91m/180-2, the fourth farthest in school history.
"Keely has been working really hard in practice," UF associate
coach Steve Lemke said. "She switched to the glide before the
outdoor season, and it becomes almost like a new event for her.
We've been seeing some really good results in training and we knew
it would just be a few weeks before we saw her reproduce those
results in a meet."
While no other Florida thrower finished in the top three during the
first day of the Drake Relays, the Gators continued to get
consistent results from both their No. 4 men's and unranked women's
runners at the historic Penn Relays in Philadelphia, Penn.
The men's 4x100 and 4x200 relay teams both qualified for Saturday's
Championship of the America's with second and third place finishes
respectively. Two other Florida relay teams (shuttle hurdle relay
and sprint medley relay) finished as the runner up in their
finals.
"Any time you come to Penn Relays, the whole goal is to be in the
Championship of Americas," UF coach Mike Holloway said. "For us to
be in both the men's 4x1 and the men's 4x2, and have good shots at
being successful in both of those, it is important."
The Gators lost the spring medley by the narrowest of margins, as
Jeff Demps, Terrell Wilks, Christian Taylor and Sean Obinwa were
edged by Penn State by just two-tenths of a second.
The women's sprint medley relay also came in second thanks to a
strong anchoring dash by freshman Cory McGee.
Individually, freshman Eddie Lovett qualified for the 110-meter
championship leg on Saturday with a second-place 13.79 run, while
junior Will Claye finished third in the long jump.
The Gators are set to compete in six men's championship events
Saturday at the Penn Relays and two finals events at the Drake
Relays.
UF Communications contributed to this report.
