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?