Sophomore Florida sprinter Jeff Demps (Winter Garden, Fla.) turned in the second-fastest time in the country this season in the men’s 60-meter dash, recording an NCAA automatic-qualifying mark, to highlight a number of strong performances by the Gators at a pair of meets on Friday – the Virginia Tech Elite Meet and the New Balance Collegiate Invitational.
Florida concluded the evening with three event victories, one NCAA automatic-qualifying time and a number of personal and season bests in a wide variety of events.
“Overall, I thought we had a very good night,” Florida head coach Mike Holloway said. “We always talk about getting better every time we go out on the track and I thought we did that tonight. The big thing was that even people who didn’t do as well as they wanted to do still got better. We are pleased with tonight, but we’re certainly not satisfied.”
Demps, running his first race of the 2011 campaign, posted the second-fastest time in the NCAA this season with a 6.57 in the finals to claim the men’s 60-meter dash. That is the second-fastest collegiate time of his collegiate career, second only to a 6.56 run in the preliminaries of the 2010 NCAA Indoor Championships. He is the fourth Gator so far this season to notch an NCAA automatic-qualifying mark/time.
Senior sprinter Terrell Wilks (New Haven, Conn.), who entered the meet ranked second all-time in school history in the men’s 60m dash, placed second in the event with a season-best time of 6.64. Junior Leonardo Seymore (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.) was fourth in the finals of that race in a season-best time of 6.78.
“Nothing Jeff does surprises us anymore,” Holloway said. “The big thing with Jeff is that he was focused and felt really good coming into the meet. He felt like he could put up a good time and he went out there and got it done. I’m also very, very pleased with Terrell Wilks’ performance in the 60. He’s never been that fast this early in the season and he did a great job tonight.”
At the New Balance Collegiate Invitational in New York, N.Y., the women’s distance medley relay team finished fourth in a time of 11:11.92. The quartet consisted of Genevieve LaCaze (Queensland, Australia), Ebony Eutsey (Miami, Fla.), Shelby Hayes (Winter Park, Fla.), Cory McGee (Pass Christian, Miss.). That currently goes down as the sixth-fastest time in the country this season and is just shy of the school record of 11:10.35 set during the 1997 season.
Sophomore sprinter Lanie Whittaker (Miami, Fla.) won the women’s 400-meter dash for the second consecutive year at the Virginia Tech Elite Meet, claiming the invitational section with a season-best time of 54.11. Freshman sprinter Darshay Davis (Mirimar, Fla.) ran the eighth-fastest time in school history in the finals of the women’s 60-meter dash, clocking a 7.53 to place fifth overall. Junior sprinter Alishea Usery (St. Louis, Mo.), competing for the first time in the 2011 campaign, placed eighth overall in the finals, but ran a time of 7.52 in the prelims of the event.
“I was very impressed with the way Lanie won her race today,” Holloway said. “She was very patient. We’ve been talking with her about running a smoother race and she did a good job of that tonight. Darshay Davis is going through kind of a transition because being from Florida, she had never run indoors, and she just keeps continuing to get better.”
Throwers David Triassi (St. Johns, Fla.) and Jeremy Postin (Auburndale, Fla.) each surpassed the 20-meter mark in the men’s weight throw for the first time in their careers. Triassi turned in the second-best mark in school history at 20.14m/66-1, while Postin had the third-best mark in school history at 20.00m/65-7.50.
“I am very pleased with our two guys in the weight throw,” Holloway said. “That’s a real testament to the hard work that they’ve been putting in with Coach [Steve] Lemke every day in practice.”
Junior jumper Will Claye (Phoenix, Ariz.), who last week automatically qualified for the NCAA Championships in the men’s triple jump, won the men’s long jump event on Friday with a mark of 7.45m/24-5.50 on his sixth and final jump of the evening.
Junior Ashley Usery (St. Louis, Mo.) clocked a personal-best time of 2:14.44 to place third in the women’s 800-meter run. That bettered Usery’s previous personal-best time of 2:17.93, recorded at the 2010 Tyson Invitational.
Hurdlers Eddie Lovett (West Palm Beach, Fla.) and Jarius Cooper (Palm Coast, Fla.), placed fifth and seventh, respectively, in the finals of the men’s 60-meter hurdles with times of 7.90 and 8.00.
