Gray Horn And Sean Obinwa Set Florida Records At Texas A&M Challenge

by FlaGators on Jan 28, 2012 7:52 PM EST in Florida Sports Grab Bag

Senior Gray Horn set the Florida Gators record for the heptathlon, with a point total of 5,971 as the Gators had another impressive showing at the Texas A&M Challenge. Horn, won the heptathlon by finishing in first in the 60m dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 60m hurdles, second in the 1,000m run and third in the pole vault. With that performance, Horn also hit the NCAA automatic qualifying mark, meaning he'll be competing in the heptathlon at the NCAA Indoor National Championships in March.

Also, according to Track & Field News, Horn's performance in the heptathlon was the sixth best collegiate performance ever.

In the field events, the Gators nearly swept every single event. Omar Craddock won the long jump, Jeremy Postin won the weight throw, Dwight Barbiasz won the high jump, Kemal Mesic won the shot put and Marquis Dendy came in fourth in the triple jump. Mesic's distance of 20.31m was good enough to qualify him for the NCAA Indoor National Championships as well. Also of note, Frankie Hammond Jr. came in fourth in the high jump.

As for the track events, while impressive, the Gators showed that there is still room for improvement. William Wynne came in third in the 60m hurdles, Hugh Graham Jr. came in second in the 400m despite it being the first time he has ever run that event, Sean Obinwa came in second in the 800m, Leonardo Seymore finished fifth in the 200m and the 4x400 relay team received a DNF for a mishap on the 2nd leg.

The best news to come out of the track side of things, was that Obinwa's time in the 800m of 1:47.22 also hit an NCAA automatic qualifier mark. So he'll be competing alongside Horn and Mesic at the NCAA Indoor National Championships.

Due to the Texas A&M Challenge being designed to pit conferences against conferences in terms of point totals, the Gators were paired up with the Tennessee Volunteers for scoring purposes. Team SEC finished in third place (yes, out of three) with 164.50 points. Team Big 12 (Texas A&M and Texas Tech) finished first with 277.25 points and Team Pac 12 (Oregon and Arizona State) finished second with 227.25 points.

We can go ahead and blame Team SEC's failure to win the Challenge on Tennessee, right?

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Damn Vols

We got totally screwed by getting matched up with those losers!

In all kinds of weather...

by skigator93 on Jan 28, 2012 10:06 PM EST reply actions

Well, the only other big meet this weekend was the Razorback Invitational. Actually, it was probably bigger because it had No. 1 Arkansas, No. 3 LSU, No. 4 Florida State, No. 5 Texas, No. 7 Stanford, No. 10 Arizona, No. 13 Arizona, No. 13 Oklahoma, No. 17 Iowa and No. 23 Georgia all competing and like three other schools who aren’t terrible.

The Texas A&M Challenge had No. 2 Florida, No. 9 Texas A&M and No. 19 Oregon. But it only had six teams instead of like ninety-three in Fayetteville.

But hey, the Gators had three athletes qualify for the NCAA Indoors, so I’ll take it. As for us getting paired up with Tennessee, they were probably the only other team left. This was our fourth year in a row competing at the A&M Challenge (mostly because of our little track rivalry with them… like last year when we won the NCAA Indoors and they won the NCAA outdoors).

Still though, like you, I blame them for Team SEC finishing in last.

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by FlaGators on Jan 28, 2012 11:21 PM EST up reply actions