Florida Gators
SEC Championships
Women's Track 2nd, Men 4th at SEC Indoor Champs
Monday, February 26, 2001 | Track and Field
At the beginning of the year, the University of Florida women's track team was picked 24th in the national poll. They Lady Gators have worked their way into the Top 10 at No. 6 to this point in the season and today proved the critics wrong once again. Today's second place finish in the SEC Indoor Championships was their third straight runner up performance and the perfect way to head into the NCAA championships in two weeks in Fayetteville, Ark. The Lady Gators had a total of 101 points, second to Arkansas' 137. South Carolina had 90 points to finish third. The Gator men's team had a total of 67 points to finish fourth, its lowest since a seventh place finish in 1997. Won the men's title with a total of 108 points, LSU was second with 81, Tennessee had 80 and Florida had 67.
Candice Scott started the day off on the right foot first thing in the morning. She won the weight throw with a mark of 61-6.25. Teammate Merilyn Brown was sixth with a mark of 56-1, a personal best.
"It was a good experience for me. It wasn't about pressure," Scott said after her win. "I just tried to put everything on the line. I'm still not at my goal, but I'll still work at it. I just have to be more aggressive."
The Bratton sisters were at it again. They led a charge of four Gator 800m runners into the finals. Kamille came out on topwith a mark of 2:09.35. Sister Kristina was second wit a mark of 2:09.43. Melissa DeLeon and Nona Allen took fourth and fifth respectively. Kamille Bratton's win is the sixth consecutive indoor 800m title for Florida. Hazel Clark won four in her career and Tamieka Grizzle won last year's title.
"I knew it was going to be a Gator that was going to win," Kamille Bratton said following the meet. "Everyone wanted to win just like me and I just turned out that I came out on top. We'll take that."
Yolanda Thompson shook off a seventh place performance in the long jump last night to finish fourth in the triple jump this morning. She marked at 42-0.75. Niki Benjamin finished third in the 60m finals and Amber Robinson was sixth. The timers had to go down to one-thousandths of a second to decipher the very close race. Florida got big points from Erin Merten in the mile (fourth place), Faith Rein in the 400m (second place in a personal best and an improved provisional qualifying time of 53.22) and Robinson in the 200 meters (third place.)
Laura Hawkins improved her provisional status for the NCAA pole vault. She came into the championships as the defending champion. She did not win the event this year, but she did set a new school record by clearing 13-1.
The Lady Gators' 4x400m relay team finished second and the distance medley relay team was ahead when Melissa DeLeon pulled up lame coming out of the first turn of the 400m leg.
"My hat goes off to our athletes," Head Coach Tom Jones said. "The did a great job. We needed to get some help from the other teams in the conference to overtake Arkansas, but they were very deep.
"On the whole, we are very happy with the result. Candice [Scott] and Kamille [Bratton] both won championships in events that are very competitive. To win a championship in this conference is something special."
The men's team got major points that it was not expecting in the shot put. Jeff Rubenstein threw a personal best 58-11.5 to provisionally qualify for the NCAA championships. He finished fourth in the competition and gave the team five points. Nick Briley threw a personal best 55-11.75 to finish sixth and Arpedge Rolle was ninth with a mark of 52-6.75.
The Gators scored nine points in the mile with a fourth place performance by Moise Joseph and a fifth place finish by Chris Duncan. Joseph had a time of 4:03.32 and provisionally qualified for the NCAA championships. His time ranks fifth all-time at Florida.
Matt Vincent finished fifth in the high jump with a mark of 6-9.75. His teammate Joe Squittieri had a mark of 6-8 for 10th place. Erik Newby, competing in his first SEC championship meet, was fourth with a mark of 52-2.75, improving his personal best and moving him to fourth on the all-time Florida list.
To end the meet on an up note, the Gators 4x400m relay team finished second in a time of 3:07.21. The team of Geno White, Aaron Armstrong, Rickey Harris and Kenyatta Nichols moved to fourth in the nation this season and fifth all-time at Florida.
"My hat goes of to Moise Joseph, Jeff Rubenstein, Erik Newby and the relay team," Head Coach Doug Brown said. "They performed extremely well today and give us a good stepping stone into the national meet.
"This meet was better for the Gators than the score will indicate," Brown continued. "We had a bunch of athletes that proved they are capable of finishing very high at the national meet. We now have 15 athletes qualified in 10 events for the NCAA's. That is a strong national team."
The Gators host the Nike Last Chance Meet at the O'Connell Center on Wednesday before traveling to Arkansas for the NCAA Championships on March 9-10.
Team scores:
Men: Arkansas (108), LSU (81), Tennessee (80), FLORIDA (67), Alabama (63), Georgia (62), Kentucky (44), South Carolina (44), Auburn (35), Mississippi (26), Mississippi State (13)
Women: Arkansas (137), FLORIDA (101), South Carolina (90), LSU (71), Georgia (56.5), Mississippi (29), Auburn (27), Alabama (22), Kentucky (20.5), Tennessee (16), Mississippi State (13), Vanderbilt (11)
END OF REPORT
