Track and Field Set for Virginia Tech Elite Meet
Wednesday, February 3, 2010 | Track and Field
The Florida track and field teams will open their second of three consecutive weekends of competition on Friday, when they travel to Blacksburg, Va., to participate in the Virginia Tech Elite Meet at Rector Field House.
The meet commences at 5 p.m. ET Friday and continues at 10 a.m. ET Saturday. Live results will be available through Flash Results at www.flashresults.com. Live updates also will be posted on the Gators' Twitter account @GZTrackField or www.twitter.com/GZTrackField.
Participating teams in the meet include a number of the top teams in both the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Southeastern Conference. Those teams include: Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, N.C. State, host Virginia Tech and Wake Forest.
“I'm very excited about this team and the direction we are headed in,” Florida head coach Mike Holloway said. “We're going to see some good competition this weekend with Georgia and Kentucky from our conference and some of the better ACC teams. They have a good facility and it's a great place to sprint and hurdle, jump and throw. We're excited to go up there and continue to get some things done as we prepare for the championship season.”
The Gators, ranked No. 5 on the men's side and No. 9 on the women's side according to the latest U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association poll are coming off a highly-successful weekend at the Texas A&M Challenge last week that resulted in three event victories, two NCAA automatic-qualifying marks/times and eight NCAA provisional-qualifying marks/times.
Three Florida athletes earned SEC Athlete of the Week honors this past weekend as senior jumper Shara Proctor (The Valley, Anguilla) was named the SEC Female Field Athlete of the Week and redshirt freshman thrower Jeremy Postin (Andover, Kan.) was named the SEC's Male Freshman of the week.
The Gators have already automatically qualified for the upcoming NCAA Indoor Championships in three events – the women's shot put (Mariam Kevkhishvili), the women's long jump (Proctor) and the men's 4x400-meter relay.
Florida currently ranks first in the SEC in four events – the three automatic qualifiers and senior sprinter Calvin Smith (Lutz, Fla.) in the 400-meter dash.
Rector Field House, which began hosting track and field meets in the 1996-97 season, features a 200-meter banked track that has served as the host to a number of the East Coast's top invitational meets. In addition to being the primary indoor facility for the track and field program, it also is used as a practice facility for numerous other Tech sports, including football.
For all of the latest information on Florida track and field, please log on to www.GatorZone.com/trackfield or follow the team's Twitter account @GZTrackField or www.twitter.com/gztrackfield.
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