With the NCAA championships on the horizon, the Alex Wilson Invitational in South Bend, Ind., serve as a “last chance” for a number of Gators to qualify for nationals.
In order to qualify for the upcoming NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark., the athlete must have a top-16 result in the nation in the specified individual event or top-12 time in the nation in the specified relay event.
Many of the Gators have solidified their places in the top-16 for individuals and top-12 for relays.
By recording a time of 7.54 seconds at last week’s Southeastern Conference Indoor Championships, junior hurdler Eddie Lovett currently owns the nation’s top time in the men’s 60m hurdles.
“When we recruited Eddie we knew he had a chance to be special,” Florida coach Mike Holloway said. “What we’re seeing out of him is what we saw in him coming out of high school. We really believed he could be the best hurdler in the country and he’s a couple steps away from being that right now.”
Also among Gators who own nation-bests is sophomore jumper Marquis Dendy. As with Lovett, Dendy also recorded his top performance at last week’s conference championships, leaping a distance of just more than 27 feet in the men’s long jump. Along with having the longest jump in the NCAA this year, Dendy’s jump is also the world’s longest of 2013.
Practice for this weekend’s last-chance meets and the following weekend’s NCAA Indoor Championships are the same as those leading up to the Southeastern Conference Indoor Championships. Rather than intense, energy-expensive practices heading into significant meets, Holloway implements a relatively laissez-faire strategy. The athletes use these upcoming weeks to rest, relax, and ensure they are at maximum efficacy headed into championship meets. This strategy has served Holloway well over the years–so much so that Holloway pulled out one of the oldest clichés in the book.
“If it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” he said.
With Florida’s men and women finishing second and fourth, respectively, at last week’s conference championships, motivation for the upcoming NCAA Championships in Fayetteville, Ark. is not exactly hard to come by, to say the least.
“We didn’t win the meet. That’s motivation in itself,” noted Holloway. We’re going back to the same place we just came from. Plus, this team has been very successful. If you’re a sophomore, junior, or senior on this team, you’ve been apart of something very special.”
Holloway added: “Everybody knows what our purpose is. Everybody knows that this is the time of year we live for at the University of Florida. We talk about championships and being ready for championship season and it’s that time. There’s nobody in this program that doesn’t understand that.”
