Four Southeastern Conference individual championships, four NCAA automatic-qualifying marks/times and two school records Saturday highlighted Florida’s performance on the second day of the 2011 SEC Indoor Championships hosted by the University of Arkansas at its Randal Tyson Track Center.
The No. 1 Gator men lead the overall competition headed into the final day with 41 total team points, while No. 5 Arkansas is second with 39 points and No. 2 LSU is third with 30 points. The No. 21 Florida women currently are in seventh place in the team race with 16 points. No. 6 Tennessee leads the women’s side with 36 points, while No. 2 LSU is second with 29 points and No. 4 Arkansas is third with 25 points.
Florida athletes claimed four SEC individual titles on Saturday as junior Dumisani Hlaselo (South Africa) won the men’s 3,000m run, junior Gray Horn (Waynesfield, Ohio) captured the first men’s heptathlon title in school history, junior Fidela James (Jacksonville, Fla.) won the women’s weight throw and senior Kemal Mesic (Sarajevo, Bosnia) claimed the men’s shot put title for the second consecutive year.
“I’m very excited about today,” Florida head coach Mike Holloway said. “We talked a lot about matching the passion and intensity of this competition and I thought we did that. I am very, very proud of everybody across the board and I’m really, really excited about tomorrow.”
