When junior Jeremy Postin released the 35-pound weight last Saturday at the Indoor Southeastern Conference Championships, he knew it was a good throw.
Postin watched as judges measured the distance, hoping it would be good enough to win and qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships.
His 21.48m throw was a personal and school record, and it won him the gold, making Postin the first UF athlete to win an SEC men’s weight throw title.
However, that personal record was just shy of the 21.50m NCAA qualifying mark.
“I threw really well, and I threw a (personal record). To see it be two centimeters short was kind of annoying,” Postin said.
Instead of letting the disappointment of missing the mark get to him, Postin is looking at the positive side of his winning throw for motivation.
“I wanted [a SEC title] since I got here,” Postin said. “That was my goal, SEC Champion and All-American. I got both of them, so it makes me happy.”
Now that Postin has accomplished this goal, he has a new one to focus on: qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Postin, along with several other track and field athletes, have one more weekend to qualify if they haven’t already. Florida athletes have made the automatic qualifying mark in seven events so far: men's 60m (Jeff Demps), triple jump (Omar Craddock), shot put (Kemal Mesic), 800m (Sean Obinwa) and heptathlon (Gray Horn) and women's mile (Cory McGee) and 4x400m relay team.
The Gators have a chance this weekend at the Alex Wilson Invitational in South Bend, Ind., and the Virginia Tech Qualifier in Blacksburg, Va., to get automatic bids.
“We’re finally peaking at the right time,” Postin said. “I feel ready to throw far. I just really want to throw that automatic.”
After starting the year ranked just outside of the cutoff at 18th, he is currently ranked 11th in the nation. Not only is this a huge improvement from the beginning of the season, but also from last year, when he said he finished in the 30s.
Although Postin is confident that he will throw an automatic mark, he still has a chance to make his first trip to the NCAAs as long as he stays inside the top 16.
“I just want to make it,” Postin said. “If I make it without the automatic, and just make it because I’m in the top 16, that’s fine with me. With the automatic, it just gives me more confidence going into the meet that I can score.”
