Florida Relays: Meet Schedule | Heat Sheets | Live Stats | Interactive Guide | Media Center
Spike's Classic: Meet Schedule | Heat Sheets
TAMPA – The University of South Florida track and field teams will compete in two separate meets but will also rest a host of athletes as the Bulls head to the Florida Relays Friday as well as the Spike's Classic at Embry-Riddle Friday and Saturday.
The Bulls have nine athletes scheduled to make the trek to Gainesville, including hurdlers David Aristil and Yvana Hepburn as well as sprinters Rebecca James, Reshaw Exilien, Greg Fontus and Pascal Orelus.
USF will take its high jumpers and pole vaulters to Embry-Riddle, as well as all four football athletes in Lindsey Lamar, Derrick Hopkins, Kayvon Webster and Sterling Griffin. All four will run the 4x100, while Griffin will compete in the 400 with the other three running in the 200. In addition, freshman Neamen Wise will make the trip for the 400 hurdles, competing for the first time outdoors in the hurdles after capturing the 300 hurdles state title in 2009, and will be joined by a few others as well.
Heat sheets for the Florida Relays for Friday's competition can be found here for the 66th annual event at Florida's James G. Pressly Stadium at Percy Beard Track. The field for the Spike's Classic set for the Embry-Riddle Track can be accessed here. Half-Mile Timing will carry live results of the Florida Relays through their website. Click here to head to the page for the links to the live results as they become available Friday.
Alabama, Bethune-Cookman, Buffalo, Clemson, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ole Miss, Penn State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, UCF and the host Gators are some of the more notable teams scheduled to compete at the Florida Relays. Four of those schools are ranked on the men's side and six boast top-25 teams for the women. The schedule of events for the Spike's Classic can be viewed here and for the Florida Relays here.
Check back at GoUSFBulls.com for the complete recap and meet results when they become available each day. As always, results from every meet throughout the year can be found on the Media Center page, while fans can keep track of USF's performances through the history and records section.
What Sophomore Slump?
If there is an opposite of the sophomore slump, then Jared Thomas is right in the midst of it. After setting the school record in the discus as a freshman in 2009, the Pensacola native has bumped up that school record of 181-2 in each of USF's first three meets of the season, culminating in the fourth-longest throw of the year in Division I at the FSU Relays last weekend with a distance of 193-6.
That accomplishment earned Thomas this week's BIG EAST Male Field Athlete of the Week honor as he continues to set his sights not only on a top finish at the NCAA Preliminary Round but also a spot in the NCAA Championships. The top 12 athletes in each event from both of the two preliminary rounds (East and West Regions - 24 athletes all together) will earn a spot to the NCAA Championships based on their performances at the prelims. Thomas' throw has him fourth in the nation right now and would have put him eighth on last year's outdoor performance list.
Nationally Ranked
As stated earlier, Thomas comes into his week off sitting fourth in the country in the discus, but a few other athletes have also found themselves in the top 30 in the nation in the early juncture of the season.
Along with Thomas, sophomores Allie Prendergast and Nicole Rozario sit in an impressive third and sixth place in the 3,000 meters and the 3,000 steeplechase, respectively, with times of 9:41.51 for Prendergast and 10:28.89 for Rozario. Sophomore David Aristil also ranks in the top 10 with his time of 51.63 in the 400-meter hurdles along with 16th in the 400 hurdles at 14.17.
Senior Michael Kursteiner also finds himself 10th in the high jump with a leap of 6-10.75, while senior Greg Fontus and junior Antillio Bastian each carry the 17th-best mark in their respective events, the 100 meters and triple jump.
For the complete list of athletes who rank in the top 40 in the nation, see the table to the right.
Not Bad For a First-Timer
Sophomore David Aristil posted a conference qualifying time in the 110 hurdles at the FSU Relays in 14.17, which moved him up to third all-time at USF. He now owns BIG EAST marks in the 110 and 400 hurdles as well as the 400 meters. More impressively, though, he nearly added a fourth one in an event he had never run before, the 800 meters, at Florida State. A time of 1:54.33 for Aristil in the 800 put him in second overall at the meet and was under two seconds from the BIG EAST qualifying time of 1:52.54. Among the individual events, only Aristil and sophomore Atasha Warren have qualified in three separate events.
Bulls Earn Academic Honor...Again
For the second time in three months, a USF track athlete was named the Northwestern Mutual Academic Student-Athlete of the Month. This time, senior Kayla Richmond was honored after sophomore Shaniel Chambers won it for the month of February. Richmond, a political science major with a 3.86 overall GPA, was recently admitted to the University of Miami Law School for her post-graduate studies. She was one of 11 athletes on the women's team to earn a 4.0 during the fall 2009 semester and one of 31 to have at least a 3.5 or better.
Updated BIG EAST Qualifying Marks
Little by little, USF keeps adding to its totals for BIG EAST qualifying marks, as the numbers now stand at 21 for the men and 26 for the women, in terms of the total number of BIG EAST marks, with 16 different athletes on the men's side and 17 athletes on the women's side holding down those conference qualifiers.
USF could add several more this weekend with three of the football players shooting for that qualifying mark in the 200, Wise and Exilien doing the same in the 400 hurdles and the 400, respectively, along with a few athletes reaching for the mark in an event they did so already during the indoor season.
For the list of all the male qualifiers, click here, and for the list of women's qualifiers, click here.
Last Time Out For the Bulls
USF piled up six first-place finishes, including Thomas' school record throw in the discus, over two days of competition at the FSU Relays March 26-27 after most of March 25's events were rained out.
Along with Thomas, junior Antillio Bastian won the triple jump by clearing 49-3.75, and sophomore Nicole Rozario took home the top spot in the 3,000 steeplechase too. Senior Michael Kursteiner needed a jump-off that went several rounds, but he eventually won the high jump competition.
In addition, sophomore David Aristil and senior Yvana Hepburn won the 110- and 100-meter hurdle titles, respectively, at the Mike Long Track.
Head to the Media Center page to find the links to the full recap and the results in PDF format from all of the outdoor meets, as well as the recap and results from every meet during the rest of the season as they happen. Don't forget to keep tabs on the team's progress throughout the year with the Track & Field Records and History Index page, which includes everyone's personal bests - indoor and outdoor - as well as a running tab of the best times and marks for the season and a complete performance list.
USF Unveils 2009-10 Online Interactive Guide
The USF athletics department will no longer print media guides and has now switched over to a new online, interactive format, which features vivid photography, videos of both the coaches and athletes, as well as everything else one would need in order to stay informed about the USF track and field program. Click here to head to the press release and then click on the image inside the story to open up the 2009-10 Track & Field Interactive Guide. Learn more about the athletes, watch them perform on the track, listen to what the coaches have to say about the program, and much, much more.
Up Next
The Bulls will leave the state of Florida for the first time in a month and a half as the teams fly up to Knoxville, Tenn., to take part in the Sea Ray Relays at the University of Tennessee April 9-10.
