Yanis David finally got her first gold.
After six silver medals in her career between the long and triple jump, the senior finally got a championship at the SEC Indoor Track & Field Championships in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on Friday.
The women’s team tied for third with Texas A&M with 19 points by Friday’s end, while the men’s team sat in fourth place with 24.
David is the first UF long jumper to win the title since Olympian Shara Proctor in 2010.
Her first three jumps all landed at 6.36 meters. That was good enough to win, but not good enough to satisfy David. Her last jump was her best at 6.46, and it refreshed the national No. 1 ranking she already held.
“That last jump, I really wanted to win with a further distance,” David said in a release. “I knew I had won, but I wasn’t satisfied with it. I wanted to go farther than that. I went for it.”
Junior Grant Holloway came into the weekend with the potential to win three individual championships, a feat nobody has ever accomplished.
He placed second in the long jump at 7.84 meters, just two centimeters shy of first place. Holloway also ran the 60 meter dash and 60 meter hurdle prelims on Friday, clocking the sixth-fastest hurdle time in collegiate history at 7.48 seconds and running the fastest dash qualifying time at 6.57.
Coach Mike Holloway said he believes Grant Holloway not placing first in the long jump was just a matter of fatigue.
“If we’re going to do all three events, we have to go big on our first two jumps,” Mike Holloway said, “because he ran out of juice.”
The throwing events, as well as all of the running events other than the 5,000 meter and the distance medley relay are on Saturday, so the jumpers and the distance runners were the show on Friday.
The men’s DMR team, consisting of redshirt junior Jack Guyton, redshirt senior Jabari Hill, junior Justin Pacifico and redshirt junior Magnus Pettersen earned bronze, clocking its best time of the season at 9:50.82.
The women’s team of freshman Gabrielle Wilkinson, sophomore Nikki Stephens, sophomore Abbie Harrelson and freshman Imogen Barrett earned silver with a time of 11:27.41. It was the best UF time since 2014.
Follow Graham Marsh on Twitter @GrahamMarshUF and contact him at gmarsh@thealligator.org.
Junior Grant Holloway took second in the men's long jump at 7.84 meters on the first day of SEC Indoor Championships.
