The No. 1 Gators faced the same question week after week throughout the season. Could they win back-to-back national championships?
As coach Mike Holloway maintained throughout the year, repeating wasn’t a concern for his team. They were just “focused on 2011.”
But once the repeat was accomplished, Florida finally let loose.
“This is the kind of stuff you dream about as a kid,” heptathlon All-American Gray Horn said. “To go out and do something incredible.”
The Gators won the NCAA Indoor Championships in College Station, Texas, with 52 total points, 12 more than second-place and host Texas A&M.
But halfway through the meet, this weekend’s win seemed like it wouldn’t come to fruition.
Florida scored just eight points Friday with junior Will Claye’s second-place finish in the long jump, which was lower than Holloway’s anticipated 12-15 points.
Things began to look even more bleak for the top-ranked Gators when they trailed No. 5 Brigham Young by 16 points through the first eight events.
“We had a lot of fight in us, and we showed that,” Holloway said. “We never worry about anybody else. We just needed to come out and be Florida. And that’s what we did.
“We had some bad luck,” Holloway continued. “People wanted to know what was wrong with Florida. There was nothing wrong with Florida.”
Thanks to the efforts of individual national champions Claye (triple jump) and sophomore Jeff Demps (60m dash), as well as All-American performances by Horn (heptathlon), junior Christian Taylor (triple jump) and Dumisane Hlaselo (men’s mile run), the Gators scored 34 points in the final nine events to clinch the meet.
Gunning for his third consecutive national title in the triple jump, Taylor finished second to Claye.
“We had some adversity,” Holloway said. “But I told them that true champions respond to adversity.”
In addition to becoming just the fourth school to win consecutive NCAA Indoor Championships, UF also saw a few of its athletes set several records.
Claye set a school and an NCAA meet record with his 17.32m/56-10 mark in the triple jump. Horn’s 5,890 points in the heptathlon set a UF record, and Demps broke a school record by winning the 60m dash in 6.53 seconds, surpassing his winning mark last year by 0.04 seconds.
“Coach just set me aside and told me to run my race,” Demps said. “It’s a nice track. It took me a while to adjust to the surface.”
Even the normally reserved Holloway finally let loose with his athletes after completing the comeback in historic fashion, enjoying the team’s consecutive NCAA crowns.
“I feel amazing right now,” Holloway said. “Just so amazing.”
