Senior sprinter Arman Hall pulled up in the final 50 meters of the men's 200.
Not Florida's Night at NCAA Indoors
Sunday, March 13, 2016 | Track and Field, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Down the stretch of the 200 meters final Saturday night, senior sprinter Arman Hall reached for his leg. There went that race and the accompanying points.
"That was indicative of the weekend," Florida coach Mike Holloway said. "If anything can go wrong, it will."
He paused.
"And it did."
The 2016 NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships did not go the Gators' way. The issues weren't gender specific, either. Both the top-ranked UF women and the No. 3 men came to the Birmingham CrossPlex with a chance to claim national titles.
The women left with a 14th-place finish. The men came in seventh.
"Things happen at championships," said sprinter Kyra Jefferson, the senior from Detroit and one of the lone bright spots for the Gators at the meet. "Sometimes you can't account for the underdogs at other schools. You have to depend on your abilities that day."
This wasn't UF's day.
Sprinter Shayla Sanders came in with the top 60 meters time in the nation. She finished seventh. Hall and fellow senior Najee Glass qualified for the second and faster heat in the 400, but finished just fourth and sixth, respectively. In the women's 400, Claudia Francis and Jefferson both scored, but picked up just the seventh- and eighth-place points. Robin Reynolds' split in the 4x400 was two seconds slower than her usual time, as the Gators could no better than seventh in a race in which they figured to win.
And then there was Hall's pull-up.
The runner-up finishes by Jefferson in the 200 and by the men's 4x400 (sans Hall) were really all the Gators had to smile about.
"We have to get focused and do a better job -- everybody," Holloway said. "Other than Kyra Jefferson, we were just awful. That's not like us. We're accustomed to coming in here and getting something done. That's on my shoulders. And we'll fix it."
Junior Nick Uruburu went to the meet as an alternate in the 4x400, but got the call after the injury to teammate Arman Hall.
In scoring in both the 400 and 200, Jefferson pulled off a rare double, becoming only the seventh woman in meet history to tally at least 10 points while competing in those very different sprints that go off just 40 minutes apart. Jefferson won her 200 heat in 22.83, but sat at the finish line and watched Tennessee's Felicia Brown clock in at 22.47 in the final heat and take the title.
An hour later, Jefferson ran the second leg for UF's 4x400-meter relay team.
"Exhausting," Jefferson said of her night. "But it was good, though. It was a lot of good preparation for outdoor [season], shocking my body so that I'm used to running at these high levels. It was great competition this meet. It really woke me up for outdoors."
Speaking of wake-up calls, Holloway credited junior Nick Uruburu -- "My go-to guy" -- for stepping in for the injured Hall and doing what an alternate is supposed to do.
Uruburu, a junior from Jacksonville, ran the third leg of the 4x400 and turned in a 46.2 split, helping the Gators to the eight second-place points.
"You can't come into a meet thinking like an alternate," Uruburu said. "I came in prepared to run. When I heard my name called, I was ready."
Holloway's goal is to have all of his athletes saying that as the Gators turn their attention to the outdoor season and immediately start putting a very un-Florida like performance behind them.
