Temoso Masikane was far from the favorite to win the men’s long jump at the SEC Outdoor Track and Field Championships. There were eight men on the start list who had jumped further than the South African freshman this outdoor season, including four of the five athletes who beat him at the indoor counterpart to these championships in February.
On his third attempt, Masikane tore down the runway before propelling himself through the warm, dry evening air inside Hutsell-Rosen Track in Auburn, Alabama. When he finally hit the sand, he was 8.01 meters away from where he took off, establishing a new leading mark that would withstand the following three rounds. With his conference long jump title – the first by a Florida man outdoors since 2018 – Masikane epitomized the trend of exceeding expectations that followed the Gators all weekend.
Despite being projected to finish eighth based on season performance lists entering the championships, head coach Mike Holloway’s group blew past that standing by five places and 28 points. Across 21 events from May 14-16, UF put up 78 points, good for a third-place team finish. This marks the Gators’ best performance at the conference level since 2019 and a complete turnaround from a 12th-place finish at this meet last season, which was the worst placement in program history.
In a break from typical trends at Florida, the largest portion of team points came from the distance events, with 28 points being poured in from the 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000 meters, as well as the 3,000-meter steeplechase. In the latter pair of races, new UF records were established in addition to critical team points being put on the board.
Freshmen Oussama Allaoui and Riley Smith have established themselves as two of the fastest milers to ever come through Gainesville, and they translated that speed into strong championship performances Saturday evening.
A slow pace through the first three laps of the 1,500-meter final meant the top 11 men were separated by less than a second at the bell. Arkansas’ Brian Masai, the fastest man in conference history, was the first athlete to pick up the pace, moving to the front and opening a commanding lead with 300 meters to go. Both Gators battled for positioning on the final lap in order to have a lane to kick down the home straight, and they both found their lane and seized it.
Allaoui swung very wide before turning on the jets. He didn’t have quite enough in his legs to bring Masai all the way back in, but he was still rewarded with his second SEC silver in 3:43.72, matching his finish in the indoor mile. Smith passed four men over the final 400 meters, climbing from ninth to fifth and adding four points to Florida’s tally. Allaoui and Smith had the second and third-fastest splits for the final lap behind only Masai.
Kelvin Cheruiyot, the SEC cross country champion in the fall and winner of two bronze medals at the indoor championships, added to his impressive freshman resume with a third-place finish over 10,000 meters and a 13:32.08 school record for fourth in the 5,000 meters.
One of the most significant breakout performances of the meet for the Florida men came from sophomore steeplechaser Graham Myers. There were three distinct groups that constituted the scoring positions with two laps remaining, and Myers was sitting towards the back of the third pack. That was when his race truly started, though, as Myers moved all the way into fourth place with one lap to go. The podium was still four seconds out of reach.
“When I got to two laps to go, I was like, ‘Okay, this is where the race is,’” Myers said. “This is what we trained for, so I gotta start reeling people in. I felt really good, so that was a good sign, and I was really excited to start winding up.”
Myers again found another gear, posting the field’s fastest final lap at 68.55 seconds. He remained in fourth, but the gap to the bronze medal was whittled down to under a half-second. Myers’ blazing close secured not only five team points, but also a school record in a final time of 8:34.68. Distance coach Will Palmer credited Myers’ stellar hurdling technique as a reason why he finished the race so strongly.
“You pick up half a meter on anyone you’re with any time you hit a barrier, so it’s like a built-in advantage,” Palmer said. “Because he’s so good, he’ll cut it close to hurdles or try and hurdle near people, and so we were really emphasizing that you have to have a clean race.”
Florida’s team performance was buoyed by a second personal best over the barriers, this one coming in the 400-meter hurdles variety. Vance Nilsson came to UF as the high school national record holder over the 300-meter hurdles and the 2024 World Junior (under 20) Champion, but the sophomore hadn’t quite managed to put up a race near his best through his first four collegiate hurdles contests.
Nilsson seemed to have found something that worked in the qualifying round, as he traversed the hurdles in 50.24 seconds, his fastest NCAA time and the eighth-fastest in the prelims. The Arizona native took it to the next level in the final, surging off the final hurdle to come across the line in third place. His clocking of 48.77 seconds took nearly a half-second off his personal best from 2024 and slotted him in at fifth in UF history and fourth in the nation this season. Nilsson was one of Florida’s most acclaimed recruits in recent memory, and a run that fully shows his potential like this one is a very positive sign for the future of the program.
When the barriers are removed from the one-lap distance, that’s where Justin Braun comes out to play. The senior, who finished as national runner-up during the indoor season, led all men in the 400-meter qualifying round with a relaxed time of 44.85. The final was one of the most anticipated races of the weekend, and it lived up to the billing with a battle between Alabama’s Samuel Ogazi and Arkansas’s Jordan Pierre that Braun just couldn’t keep up with. He crossed the line in fifth, running a solid time of 45.30 to secure four points for Florida.
Assistant coach Eric Werskey’s throws group contributed 17 points in a trio of gritty displays.
Freshman Basel Abosina had Florida’s first scoring opportunity of the meet in the men’s hammer, and the Egyptian rookie delivered. Abosina recorded the three best marks of his collegiate career on the day, capped by a sixth-round effort of 68.64 meters. That held up for fourth in the competition and moved into the ranks of the five best men in UF history.
“I feel good, but there is a lot in the tank,” Abosina said. “My performance has been building up in each competition. I will be ready in the next couple competitions.”
A “last throw, best throw” mentality proved true for each of Florida’s scorers in the throws. Leikel Cabrera Gay, the national javelin runner-up last summer, only took one attempt in his competition, but a 78.63-meter heave was still enough to finish in a bronze medal position. The Cuban junior suffered a knee injury at Florida’s last home meet in April, but that wasn’t enough to hold him off the podium.
“I feel pretty confident about what’s coming,” Cabrera Gay said. “Getting hurt got me a little bit back to reset and analyze what I’m doing… I’m more focused on everything in training and technique.”
Jarno van Daalen backed up his shot put silver from the indoor season with a bronze medal outdoors, placing third thanks to a last-round effort of 19.71 meters. The Dutch freshman was in fifth entering his sixth attempt prior to unleashing a new outdoor personal best that now ranks him third in UF history outdoors.
Back on the jumps runway, perhaps the most surprising pair of points for the Gators over the weekend came courtesy of Jaden Lippett in the men’s triple jump. The sophomore was seeded 13th entering the competition, but a 16.01-meter jump in the third round was enough to place seventh when the dust settled. In addition to putting two more onto the Gators’ tally, Lippett also cleared the 16-meter barrier for the first time in his career, jumping nearly 50 centimeters further than he had during the regular season.
The Gators opened and closed the final day of track action with scoring relay teams. The men’s 4x100-meter lineup has been shifting and impacted by injuries all season long, but Saturday’s quartet of freshman Jayden Horton-Mims, sophomores Jaden Wiley and Trenton Howard and junior Malique Smith-Band still posted an impressive time of 38.95 seconds to finish sixth in their first race as a unit.
The 4x400-meter relay, which has been a cornerstone event of the men’s program for decades, proved fruitful once more for the Gators. Horton-Mims, sophomore Nicholas Spikes, Smith-Band and Braun came together for an exceptional clocking of 3:00.31 for second place. With a 44.48-second anchor leg split from Braun, Florida posted the second-fastest time in the NCAA this season, and the four men rank tied for eighth in UF history.
Florida’s next opportunity to exceed its entry seeds will come May 27-30 in Lexington, Kentucky, at the NCAA East Regional. Qualifying athletes seek top 12 finishes in order to secure their place at the national championships two weeks later.
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.
