BLACKSBURG, Va. – It was cold and snowy outside the Rector Field House but the track inside was blistering hot as Florida’s track teams competed in the first day of the Virginia Tech Elite Meet.
Florida’s Shara Proctor, a senior jumper from Anguilla, turned in this year’s second-best long jump with her winning effort of 21 feet, 10¾ inches (6.67 meters). It was the second straight week that Proctor has broken her school record, and only the Ukraine’s Viktoriya Rybalko (6.69 meters) has a better effort this indoor season.
“The big thing about Shara is that she and coach (Brian) O’Neal have put together a plan and the plan is to get a little bit better each week,” Florida head coach Mike Holloway said.
“She’s consistently doing that. She had the No. 12 jump in NCAA history tonight. That’s a huge jump and I think everybody has taken notice of what she has been able to accomplish this season.”
Proctor’s victory was one of two individual event victories by the Gators. Freshman sprinter Lanie Whittaker won the women’s 400 meters with an NCAA provisional qualifying time of 54.06 seconds.
“We had a very good day today,” Holloway continued. “We’ve reinforced to our team the importance of focus and effort and I think we saw a lot of that today. If you look across the board tonight, in just about everything we did, there was improvement. I am very, very pleased with the team as a whole today.”
Sophomore sprinter Jeff Demps, competing in his first meet of the 2010 season, charted an NCAA provisional-qualifying time of 6.64 in the preliminaries of the men’s 60-meter dash and then clocked the second-fastest time in school history in the finals with a time of 6.61 to place second. His football teammate, redshirt sophomore Chris Rainey was fourth in the finals in an NCAA provisional-qualifying time of 6.70.
Freshman sprinter Tony McQuay was second in the men’s 400 meters in a time of 46.90, while junior Lamarr Davis won his heat and finished fourth overall in 48.54.
Freshman Josh Evans and sophomore Gray Horn each advanced to the finals of the men’s 60-meter hurdles. In the finals, Evans was fourth in 8.21, while Horn was fifth in 8.22. Freshman hurdler Ugonna Ndu just missed a trip to the finals of the women’s 60-meter hurdles, placing ninth overall in a collegiate-best time of 8.82.
Men’s weight throwers Jeremy Postin and David Triassi each turned in strong performances. Postin had a toss of 59 feet, 4 inches. Triassi had a personal best of 57 feet, 2¾ inches.
Freshman Derek Wehunt placed seventh in the mile in 4:15.96.