In the NCAA’s triple jump rankings one meet into the 2020 season, two Gators top the list.
Grant Holloway raised his arms in celebration as he crossed the line to win his sixth high-hurdle championship. The junior from Chesapeake, Virginia, never left a national championship hurdle race without a gold medal. Now he will turn professional, according to coach Mike Holloway, leaving UF as one of the most decorated track athletes in the history of the NCAA and one of the best athletes to ever come through Gainesville.
Grant Holloway usually has a good start. Friday in Austin, Texas, was no different.
Two events, three years, six championships.
The Florida softball team had just won its second national championship in as many years. Robert Reed watched his freshman daughter, Megan, sprint from the dugout with the rest of the 2015 squad to join the celebratory dogpile. The moment for Robert was bittersweet. His daughter was now a national champion, but she was also no longer a softball player, a sport she’d been in for fifteen years.
Sophomore Amanda Froeynes was down 300 points with only one event left to go in the SEC Women’s Heptathlon.
Not a single mistake.
The LSU Alumni Gold Meet featured two of the three best 4x100-meter relay teams in the country: No. 1 LSU (38.41) and No. 3 Florida (38.69). The Gators relay consists of juniors Grant Holloway and Raymond Ekevwo, sophomore Hakim Sani Brown and senior Ryan Clark.
Fourteen milliseconds was the difference. When senior Ryan Clark carried the baton across the line, it was not good enough to alter the nation’s leaderboard, but it was good enough to win on Saturday.
Sharrika Barnett reached the final straightaway clearly in first place.
Sophomore Hakim Sani Brown was seemingly passive in his handoff to junior Grant Holloway. He was not aggressive enough in actually getting the baton in Holloway’s hands to continue the race.
Senior Yanis David’s mom and grandma watched her jump in person for the first time in the United States. They watched her extend her national No.1 ranking to 37 centimeters in the triple jump with a jump of 14.05 meters.
Grant Holloway was in first place running the curve of the 200-meter dash at the Florida Relays on Friday. But Akeem Sirleaf from North Carolina A&T caught up to him during the straightaway.
The Pepsi Florida Relays was Cameron Mahorn’s first home meet.
Hakim Sani Brown, the sophomore sprinter from Tokyo, placed the baton cleanly into the hands of junior Grant Holloway. Holloway rounded the curve to give it to senior Ryan Clark, who finished the relay with nobody on either side of him, clearly in first place.
For the second time in as many years, and for the fifth time since 2010, the Florida men’s track and field team won the NCAA Indoor Championship.
The championship was already locked up.
Yanis David finally got her first gold.
Just like on the track, UF’s the long-distance runners have much farther to travel this weekend for their meet than everyone else.
Solutions by The State News
