James G. Pressly Stadium, which houses UF’s Percy Beard Track, is outside.
Florida coach Mike Holloway and his athletes spend hours every day practicing and training there.
So, it makes sense that Holloway feels his teams will be more comfortable and competitive during outdoor season than they were in indoor season.
"We train outside every day," Holloway said. "We are just built better for outdoor. That doesn’t discount what happened indoors, but we just have to move forward."
Most of Holloway’s athletes, save the ones who competed at the Black & Gold Challenge on Friday and Saturday, will be making their outdoor season debut on Friday.
Both the men’s and women’s teams will be split between two meets: the Trojan Invitational hosted by the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and the Raleigh Relays hosted by N.C. State in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Holloway expects both of his teams to come out strong, with the athletes competing in Los Angeles facing some of the best teams in the nation in Ohio State, USC and Texas.
"If I got to get someone fired up to compete against USC, Texas and Ohio State in a track meet, then they shouldn’t be here at the University of Florida," Holloway said. "We take a lot of pride in what we do here, and we need to exhibit that pride. We need to understand that, you know, this is who we are, we are going to face competition like this every weekend and we need to embrace that."
A good sign for Florida heading into outdoor season is that senior Arman Hall, one of the men’s team’s anchors who injured himself in the 200-meter dash at the NCAA Indoors on March 12, will be ready to compete.
"He is fine," Holloway said. "Our goal with Arman is for Arman to be the outdoor champion at the NCAA meet, and he also has aspirations to make the Olympic team later in the summer. But he is fine, and moving forward we expect him to be well."
If last weekend’s Black & Gold Challenge, which included five first-place and three second-place finishes for the Gators, is any indication of how the outdoor season will pan out, Florida is in good shape.
"Effort and execution. That is all that we ask for," Holloway said. "We have to understand the process, understand where we are in our training, and what we are doing, and just go out and execute. If we do that, we will be fine."
Contact Lauren Staff at lstaff@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @lstaff27.
UF coach Mike Holloway smiles during the 2015 Florida Relays at James G. Pressly Stadium.
