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Friday, March 29, 2024
<p align="justify">Throwers coach Steve Lemke (left) and coach Mike Holloway walk across the field at Percy Beard Track at Pressly Stadium during the 2012 Florida Relays. Seventeen Gators qualified Sunday for the NCAA Outdoor Championships, which are set to begin June 5.&nbsp;</p>

Throwers coach Steve Lemke (left) and coach Mike Holloway walk across the field at Percy Beard Track at Pressly Stadium during the 2012 Florida Relays. Seventeen Gators qualified Sunday for the NCAA Outdoor Championships, which are set to begin June 5. 

 Freshman sprinter Kyra Jefferson, placing in the top three in every event she has tried this year has caught her by surprise.

“I didn’t even expect to make it to the finals,” Jefferson said. “I took it as, ‘If I make it to the finals as a freshman, I did good.’ It turned out that I made it to the finals and [achieved a personal record] and placed.”

Heading into Lincoln, Neb., for the Frank Sevigne Husker Invite this weekend, Jefferson and the rest of the Florida track and field team hope to sustain its momentum from last week. A key ingredient to the Gators’ success this year so far has been the performance of the underclassmen, accounting for an emphatic majority (16 of 22) of

Florida’s event victories this season. And that’s not including relay teams of mixed classes.

But it’s not solely raw talent that guides these Gators to victory on a regular basis. It’s their workmen-like attitudes.

“They’re a very focused, very talented group, but they’re not a group to rest on their laurels.”

Florida coach Mike Holloway said. “Sometimes you get a talented group of athletes that think they’re going to do well in competitions because they’re talented. This group seems to understand that talent isn’t enough and that they have to work hard, they have to trust their coaches, and they have to trust their training.”

Kyra Jefferson had a slightly different take on the success of the Gators’ underclassmen, attributing their recent triumphs to further familiarizing themselves with college track game itself.

“I think it’s because we all know that we have to learn right now,” Jefferson said. “We’re in the process of just getting better and learning from everybody else.”

With top-ten ranked men’s (No. 2) and women’s (No. 7) teams heading into Lincoln this weekend, a potential pitfall the Gators face is that of complacency. After, arguably, the best performance Florida’s shown this season this past weekend in Fayetteville, Ark., it’d be easy for most teams to take a step back and bask in the glory. This shouldn’t be the case for the Gators, at least as long as coach Holloway has anything to say about it.

“After a competition like the one in Arkansas, we have a tendency to take a step back and think, ‘Hey, we’ve arrived’,” Holloway said. “I let them know before we left the building that what happened in Arkansas stays in Arkansas. We have to leave that there.”

The season, just like the team, is young. The Frank Sevigne Husker Invite this weekend will be their fourth meet of the season; just another stepping stone en route to the ultimate goal of winning a championship.

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“These trips are about business,” Holloway said. “Our goal has always been: we want to be our best at the championship meets. The older athletes have done a good job with helping the younger athletes understand that.”

Throwers coach Steve Lemke (left) and coach Mike Holloway walk across the field at Percy Beard Track at Pressly Stadium during the 2012 Florida Relays. Seventeen Gators qualified Sunday for the NCAA Outdoor Championships, which are set to begin June 5. 

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