The Florida track and field team is geared up to compete in the 2026 SEC Outdoor Championships from May 14-16 at Hutsell-Rosen Track in Auburn, Alabama.
It’s the first time in 18 years the championships are returning to Auburn. Across three days, the region’s best runners, jumpers and throwers will do battle for team and individual glory, aiming to claim conference prestige and lock in regional qualifying marks for the impending national postseason.
For the Florida Gators, these championships present a historic opportunity. The women’s team has already earned conference titles during the cross country and indoor seasons, and a victory over the weekend would constitute the program’s first SEC triple crown since 1997. The men, on the other hand, are riding an eight-year drought on this stage and will be looking to improve upon a fourth-place finish from this meet’s indoor counterpart.
Here are six key questions for head coach Mike Holloway’s squad, the answers to which will be major determining factors in the Gators’ ability to meet the lofty standard the program has set:
Can Gabby Matthews continue to elevate in the postseason?
Last season, Matthews returned from early-season injuries and came out of left field to become a first-team All-American over 200 meters thanks to personal bests at the NCAA East Regional and the NCAA Championships. She had a similar surge during her indoor campaign, running back-to-back personal bests on the national stage to secure a silver medal for the Gators.
The Jamaican senior has added the 100-meter to her arsenal this outdoor season. Despite ranking second in UF history in both short sprints events, Matthews enters these championships ranked 14th in the conference in the 100 and fifth in the 200 meters. The Gators found a way to win the SEC team title indoors with just one point provided by Matthews, but history is unlikely to repeat itself on the outdoor stage. She’ll also have the chance to provide value for Florida in both relays, as she’s currently entered to handle the third leg on both the 4x100 and 4x400-meter relays.
What impact can Eden Robinson and Pauline Bikembo make?
Stacking the personal bests of Florida’s heptathlon duo against the rest of the conference comes out quite favorably. Bikembo’s best mark of 5.722 points would rank the French sophomore second in the SEC, while Robinson’s haul of 5,648 points would put the Welsh freshman in a tie for fifth. However, neither Gator has completed the full gauntlet of a heptathlon yet this season.
In a bevy of individual events, both women have still managed to collect new personal bests this spring. Bikembo opened her outdoor season with a huge mark of 45.74 meters in the javelin throw — a four-meter improvement — and Robinson ran 2:14.69 for 800 meters, shaving nearly two seconds off her previous best time. If the pair can carry that form into all seven events, it could prove to be a big shakeup in the scoring tables when compared to current projections.
How will Claire Stegall manage the 800, 1,500-meter double?
Stegall contested a pair of events at the SEC Indoor Championships in February, finishing runner-up in the mile and anchoring the Gators distance medley relay to the same spot on the podium. The freshman’s double this weekend is a bit more challenging, however. Stegall will race the 800-meter preliminary round on Thursday evening, followed by the first round of the 1,500 meters on Friday. If she qualifies for both finals, the Tennessee native will only have 75 minutes between the two on Saturday night. Stegall showcased the ability to produce a pair of impressive races in the same day at the NCAA Indoor Championships, running 4:29.02 in her mile prelim before splitting 4:28.43 in the relay, but she had over double the amount of time to recover between those two efforts.
Even if Stegall can manage to be at her best in both of her races, contending for medal positions will still be challenging. She ranks fourth in the SEC in the 800 meters and third in the 1,500, and the only woman that sits ahead of her in both events is South Carolina junior Salma Elbadra. Elbadra outkicked Stegall to win both conference title races indoors and has finished ahead of her conference rival in Stegall’s only two outdoor races. A reversal of fortunes in either event would add a handful of valuable points to the board that could end up swinging a tight team race in Florida’s favor.
Will Trenton Howard be able to score in the men’s 100 or 200 meters?
With graduate student Wanya McCoy entered only in the 4x100-meter relay, the brunt of the expectations for the Gators short sprinters falls onto Howard’s shoulders. The sophomore from Texas set a pair of impressive personal bests at Florida’s home meets this spring, running 10.17 for 100 meters and 20.66 for 200 meters. It would likely take another personal best in either event to make the final, but Howard has proven this spring that he’s capable of taking significant margins of time off his all-time best marks in a single race.
How many points can the women’s throws group put on the board?
Alida van Daalen’s season debut in the Orange and Blue at the East Coast Relays was a welcome sign for the team, as the Dutch senior is the reigning back-to-back conference champion in the discus. She has also never finished worse than sixth in the shot put at the SEC level. While van Daalen is a near-lock for double digit points, her teammates joining her on the scoring tables would go a long way towards Florida’s path to the triple crown.
Junior Gracelyn Leiseth ranks fourth in the conference in the shot put and 11th in the discus, senior Akari Isaac currently has the 10th-best discus mark in the SEC and senior Imani Washington is seventh on the hammer throw tables. Last season, the trio notched nine points at this meet, with Washington and Leiseth both recording personal bests. Repeating that caliber of performance when factoring in each athlete’s new and elevated baseline standard should mean important points for the Gators.
How will Riley Smith handle postseason racing?
An unfortunate bout of the flu kept Smith out of his postseason debut indoors, but the Gainesville native looks to be ready to leave his mark on the SEC stage following a strong series of races outdoors. Smith contested two 1,500-meter races this season and set a new personal best in each, with his mark of 3:39.79 from the Wake Forest Invitational ranking fourth in program history and eighth in the SEC.
Championship distance racing, however, is rarely decided simply by who has historically run the fastest. Finals can play out more tactically over the first few laps before coming down to a sprint finish. In Smith’s best races — a sub-four-mile and the second-fastest 3,000-meter performance in UF history indoors — he has shown the ability to overtake fading runners in the closing stages and rocket up the standings. That skill is one that should serve him well in Auburn.
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.
