On Saturday at the Crimson Tide Indoor Opener in Birmingham, Ala., freshmen Najee Glass and Arman Hall had to replace two members of the 2012 NCAA Championship 4x400-meter relay team who clinched Florida’s first outdoor national title.
Glass and Hall came through with a win.
The two paired up with sophomores Hugh Graham Jr. and Dedric Dukes to grab the win with a time of 3:07.59, which is the second-fastest time in the NCAA for the 2013 season.
“Anybody who knows us and knows our program expects us to perform at a high level,” coach Mike Holloway said. “When we’re recruiting athletes, we don’t recruit them to be successful when they’re juniors and seniors. We expect them to come in and contribute right away, and that’s what you saw with our freshman class [Saturday].”
In addition to helping Florida win the men’s 4x400, Hall and Glass finished the men’s 200 meters in second and fourth, respectively.
Overall, the Gators had 17 top-three finishes on Saturday, including six event victories.
On the women’s side, freshman Kyra Jefferson had the strongest outing of all newcomers.
After finishing second in her section of the 60 meters with a time of 7.47, Jefferson went on to run the third leg of the women’s 4x400-meter relay. Jefferson teamed up with Lanie Whittaker, Destinee Gause and Ebony Eutsey to help the Gators take a second place finish with a time of 3:38.65, falling to Texas by only .43.
“I’m very proud of all of [the freshmen], and I think as a whole, the team performed at a high level,” Holloway said. “I wanted to see some pride, I wanted to see some passion and I wanted to see execution. We had all of those [Saturday].”
While the freshmen may have stolen the spotlight during Florida’s season opener, sophomores Ciarra Brewer and Marquis Dendy dominated the competition in long jump. Brewer and Dendy swept the long jump titles for Florida with marks of 6.09m and 7.75m, respectively.
Cory McGee and Eddie Lovett shined for the juniors as they won each of their events.
While McGee is no stranger to competing in the 800 meters during the outdoor season, Saturday was her first time running the event indoors at Florida. McGee used a time of 2:09.01 to recover from a stumble and win the race.
Lovett, the two-time Southeastern Conference champion in 60-meter hurdles, carried over the success of his 2012 campaign by getting a win on Saturday. His time of 7.80 in the finals beat the rest of the field by a sizeable margin.
“For [Lovett] to run by himself and beat the field by that much, that was impressive and it’s easily the fastest he’s ever opened up (a season),” Holloway said. “Across the board, I was just very pleased with the effort and the focus of our athletes today.”
Contact Katie Agostin at kagostin@alligator.org.
Sophomore jumper Marquis Dendy competes in the long jump at the Gator Invitational on Jan. 22, 2012, in the O’Connell Center.
