Being a male long jumper at Florida carries weight and expectations built by a long line of legends who came before. There is a standard that has been set in the event over the years, placing 61 All-America honors and seven national titles into the trophy cases inside Gale Lemerand Athletic Center.
The most recent chapter of this legacy came to a close in June, as Malcolm Clemons notched title number seven at the NCAA Outdoor Championships in his final collegiate competition. Clemons was the only Gator to compete in the men’s long jump outdoors last spring, leaving a slight air of uncertainty surrounding those who would fill his spikes the following season.
Through the first three meets of 2026, the uber-talented freshman trio of Temoso Masikane, Luke Stradley and Nicolas Crosswhite have proven that Florida’s prowess on the runway isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
“We’re trying to be the best trio jump crew in the nation,” Crosswhite said. “And right now, it’s already looking like that.”
They’re certainly making a solid argument as the premier group in the country. Masikane ranks fourth collegiately, Stradley 25th and Crosswhite 35th. Florida is one of just three programs to have three men slot into the ranks of the 50 best jumpers in the NCAA, and jumps coach Nic Petersen’s squad is the youngest of that bunch by a significant margin.
“It’s kind of a cool situation,” Petersen said. “They all live in the same dorm, they all practice together, they’ve kind of just collectively become a unit… The culture that they’ve got is it’s them against the world.”
Each jumper came to Gainesville with a laundry list of accolades and eye-popping performances to their names.
Hailing from Phokeng, South Africa, Masikane owns the African under-18 record with an 8.06-meter mark from 2023, making him the eighth-best youth long jumper in world history. He finished fourth at the 2024 World Under-20 Championships, a tantalizing six centimeters off the podium.
As if his long jump exploits weren’t enough evidence of the kind of sheer talent Masikane possesses, he finished runner-up in the triple jump at the South African Championships in April, a month after trying the event for the first time. His mark of 15.95 meters would have been in strong contention for a ticket to the NCAA Outdoor Championships last spring.
Despite crossing the Atlantic to study and compete collegiately, Masikane’s transition to life in the U.S. has been a painless one, largely thanks to Petersen.
“It’s been really smooth,” Masikane said. “Coach P has kind of been like a dad to me ever since I landed at the airport… We have a good relationship, and it kind of closes the distance between me and home a bit.”
For Georgia natives Stradley and Crosswhite, the change of scenery when entering college was much less drastic. Their high schools are about an hour drive from each other, meaning that the pair served as each other’s primary rivals throughout their prep careers. Going head-to-head in six events at the 2023 and 2024 GHSA 6A Championships, Crosswhite claimed three state titles while Stradley won two. The triple jump final two years ago was decided by a single inch, with Crosswhite coming out on top.
Any sense of rivalry between the two has quickly faded since joining forces at UF.
“It’s like having two little brothers,” Crosswhite said of his relationship with both Stradley and Masikane. “It’s fun. I never get bored around these two; it’s always something. Even off the track, we still talk about track.”
Crosswhite looks at them as his little brothers because he redshirted last season due to a pair of hamstring injuries. Despite it technically being his second season in the NCAA, Crosswhite still shares with his teammates the mantle – and competitive inexperience – of a freshman.
“Sometimes, they’re so young they don’t know any better, so there’s a lack of fear,” Petersen said. “They just go out there and do their thing.”
For Masikane, the experience of training and competing alongside Stradley and Crosswhite is especially important because he was forced to train solo in Phokeng. In Gainesville, he doesn’t just have athletes to train with, but he has athletes at his level to train with.
“It was kind of a game changer,” Masikane said. “It makes you step up every single day, it puts you in competition with every day, that’s what I love about it. Even though it’s a competition, it’s healthy competition.”
Florida’s most recent meet in Arkansas provided the clearest vision of what this group can do when firing on all cylinders. At the Tyson Invitational on Feb. 13, Masikane and Stradley both set personal bests to finish first and third, with Crosswhite rounding out the trio in a strong fourth place.
Masikane’s 8.11-meter effort reset his personal best for the first time in nearly three years, which is especially impressive considering it was only the second indoor competition of his life.
“It feels good knowing that whatever we’ve been working on is finally working out,” Masikane said. “It just means that there is more in the tank. Even though it was a PB, I’m grateful for it, and it was a good feeling, there was still something wrong with the jump… It’s only up from here.”
Petersen also sees the potential for Masikane to continue growing from what is already the fourth-best jump in the NCAA this season, saying that he “would not put any limits on Temoso at all.”
While long jump has been the event at the forefront of this indoor season, all three men have shown exciting potential in the other jumps as well.
Masikane is still just scratching the surface of the triple jump. His 15.56-meter opener last month in Gainesville wasn’t the most eyebrow-raising mark, but he trusts that “it’s all going to come together.”
Stradley is still limited in what events he and Petersen choose to attack as he builds back strength and confidence from an ankle injury last spring, but he ranked inside the top 15 in the nation as a junior in 2024 in both the high and triple jumps. Crosswhite has already set a triple jump personal best this season at 15.24 meters, and last spring he finished second in the high jump at the Tom Jones Memorial Invitational while competing unattached.
The next stanza of this indoor season will be written in College Station from Feb. 26-28, as Masikane, Stradley and Crosswhite look to put important points on the board for the Gators at the SEC Indoor Championships.
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org and follow him on X at @phofmahoney.
Paul is a senior in his fourth semester on the track and field/cross country beat for The Alligator. In his free time, you can increasingly see him jogging around Gainesville or endlessly falling deeper down the rabbit hole that is track Twitter.
