Florida’s Will Claye (Phoenix, Ariz.) and Gray Horn (Waynesfield, Ohio) each turned in NCAA automatic-qualifying marks on Saturday to highlight the Gators’ participation in the Texas A&M Challenge presented by Mondo America at the Gilliam Indoor Track Stadium.
The Gators won five events on the weekend and totaled two NCAA automatic marks. Florida has now automatically qualified three athletes for the upcoming NCAA Indoor Championships, as the pair of Claye and Horn join sophomore triple jumper Omar Craddock (Killeen, Texas) as athletes who have punched their tickets back to College Station in March.
“I’m very proud of our team as a whole,” Florida head coach Mike Holloway said. “Coming into this weekend, we challenged our athletes just to get better. Our goal each week is just to get better; it’s not about setting records or anything like that. We’re close to where we want to be as a team. This is a very talented group and, as long as we continue to stay focused, we’re going to be okay. At Florida, we work very hard on being at our best at the end of the year and we do that by staying focused on getting better each day.”
Claye, jumping in his first meet in a Gator uniform after transferring from Oklahoma this summer, turned in the best mark in the nation this season in the men’s triple jump with an NCAA automatic-qualifying leap of 16.86m/55-3.25. That goes down as the second-best indoor men’s triple jump mark in school history and Florida’s current jumps corps now features three of the top four triple jumpers in program history.
Claye, who achieved the NCAA automatic mark on his first attempt Saturday, posted the record-setting mark on his final attempt of the afternoon. That breaks the previous Texas A&M Challenge meet record of 16.45m/53-11.75, previously set by Texas A&M’s Julian Reed. Claye is the only men’s triple jumper in the country this season to surpass the 55-foot plateau.
Horn won the men’s heptathlon with a personal best and an NCAA automatic-qualifying score of 5,747. That goes down as the second-best heptathlon score in school history and betters his previous personal-best mark of 5,653. He won four of the seven events in which he competed over the course of the weekend and his score goes down as the second-best in the country this season.
After setting the first-day school record on Friday with a four-event total of 3,242, Horn opened his second day of competition by winning the 60-meter hurdles in a time of 8.27. He continued on to the pole vault, where he finished third with a leap of 4.55m/14-11, before closing out the day with a second-place finish in the 1,000-meter run with a time of 2:45.37.
“The goal was to come in here and establish what my strengths and my flaws are and I think we did just that,” Horn said. “The pros were higher than the cons this weekend and, thankfully, I was able to put together a good score to go on to nationals. It feels good to know after a long fall of work that it all came together and I was able to be successful.”
Freshman middle-distance runner Dumisane Hlaselo (South Africa) won the men’s mile competition in a time of 4:05.95, directing a 1-3-6 finish by the Gators in that event. Derek Wehunt (Tampa, Fla.) placed third overall in a time of 4:11.40, while junior Michael Anderson (Williston, Fla.) had an indoor personal best of 4:13.17 to finish sixth overall.
Senior thrower Kemal Mesic (Sarajevo, Bosnia) captured the men’s shot put competition with a toss of 18.88m/61-11.50. Mesic remains undefeated against collegiate competitors this season, having already entered the meet among the top-10 men’s shot put competitors in the country this season.
Freshman Ebony Eutsey (Miami, Fla.) claimed the women’s 400-meter run in a time of 54.59 to pick up her first collegiate victory. Eutsey then ran the lead-off leg of Florida’s 4x400-meter relay team that posted a time of 3:36.45, which is just outside of Florida’s all-time top-10. She was joined on the relay by Lanie Whittaker (Miami, Fla.), Danielle Williams (Jacksonville, Fla.) and Ugonna Ndu (Newark, N.J.).
Junior Christian Taylor (Fayetteville, Ga.), jumping for the first time in the 2011 season, placed second in the men’s long jump with a leap of 7.57m/24-10. Freshman Lorraine Graham (Springdale, Md.) was second in the women’s long jump with a mark of 6.04m/19-9,75, while senior Daniela Griffin (Jacksonville, Fla.) was eighth with a personal-best mark of 5.79m/19-0, bettering her previous best by four inches.
Craddock, who has already qualified automatically for the NCAA Indoor Championships in the men’s triple jump, was second in that event on Saturday with a mark of 15.82m/51-11.
Senior sprinter Terrell Wilks (New Haven, Conn.) and junior transfer Leonardo Seymore (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.) each advanced to the finals of the men’s 60-meter dash, finishing fifth and sixth, respectively. Wilks, who ranks second on the school’s all-time 60m list, posted a strong season-opening time of 6.72.
Sean Obinwa (Tampa, Fla.) was second in the men’s 800-meter run in 1:50.72, while sophomore John Mitchell (Plant City, Fla.) was third also with a personal-best 1:51.35. Daniel Wehunt (Tampa, Fla.) placed sixth overall in a collegiate-best 1:52.72.
Freshman distance runner Callie Cooper (St. Johns, Fla.) placed seventh in the women’s 3,000-meter run in a time of 9:43.42. Cooper’s time was a sizeable personal-best of more than 30 seconds in that event. On the men’s side James Uthmeier (Destin, Fla.) was fifth in the 3,000-meter run in a personal-best time of 8:25.96.
Junior Ashley Usery (St. Louis, Mo.) placed seventh in the women’s 600-yard run in a time of 1:24.27. That bettered her previous personal-best time of 1:26.16, charted at last season’s Texas A&M Challenge.
Freshman sprinter Darshay Davis (Mirimar, Fla.) was seventh overall in the women’s 200-meter dash in a time of 24.20, while Seymore was tied for fifth in the men’s 200-meter dash in 21.50.
Freshman hurdler Eddie Lovett (West Palm Beach, Fla.) posted a collegiate-best time of 7.88 in the preliminaries of the men’s 60-meter hurdles, while William Wynne (Marietta, Ga.) was fourth in the event’s final by clocking a 7.92.
Distance runners Mandy Perkins (Ormond Beach, Fla.) and Stephanie Strasser (Fernandina Beach, Fla.) were fourth and fifth, respectively in the women’s mile both running times of 4:55.66 and 4:55.73.
Florida returns to action on Friday when it travels to Blacksburg, Va., to compete in the two-day Virginia Tech Elite Meet.
