After traveling more than 2,094 miles to Boise, Idaho, to wrap up the indoor season, the Gators will have a short trip this weekend as they travel to Orlando for their first meet of the outdoor season.
Although Florida is coming off an indoor national title win for the men and a ninth-place finish for the women, both teams will need to put celebrating accolades aside to focus on the UCF Invitational this weekend.
The top-ranked Gators men open their outdoor season with Anthony Amodio on pole vault, while the No. 11 women debut with Claire Spurling and Caitlin Schuessler on the pole vault.
“We can’t get excited about what we did indoors and let that keep us from doing what we’re capable of doing outdoors,” coach Mike Holloway said.
This is the third consecutive year the men enter the outdoor season as the preseason No. 1. However, each of the previous two years the men have fallen short of finishing the season No. 1, coming in second in 2010 and third in 2011 at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
After winning the Southeastern Conference Indoor title and having a top-10 finish at the NCAA meet, the women look like they are heading toward a better finish for outdoors than last year’s tie for 34th.
“Hopefully the women recognize what my staff and I recognize, which is that we are one of the elite teams in the country,” Holloway said.
In addition to having a better start this year with the indoor season, the women’s team also features 12 nationally ranked athletes including Darshay Davis (ranked 18th in the 100-meter sprint and 17th in the 200m), Ebony Eutsey (ranked eighth in the 400m) and Brittany Harrell (ranked 11th in the heptathalon).
Along with the women, the men’s team has 13 nationally ranked athletes, including Jeff Demps (100m), Tony Mcquay (400m) and Omar Craddock (triple-jump), each of whom won individual indoor titles earlier this month and enter the outdoor season ranked No. 1 in their respective events.
“When you look at what’s going on here with recruiting over the last few years, we got a great group of athletes on both sides,” Holloway said. “What we can’t do is say ‘Well we’re going to do well because we’ve got great athletes.’ We got to keep coaching; we got to keep training hard.”
