Georgia Track Begins SEC Meet With Mixed Results
Georgia sophomore Kendell Williamson wins her first Southeastern Conference indoor title to highlight the opening day of the Southeastern Conference Track & Field Championships on Friday.
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Kendell Williams, who was the 2014 SEC runner-up before claiming last year’s NCAA championship with a collegiate record score, tallied 4,519 points to claim her first Southeastern Conference Indoor Pentathlon Championship.
The second-ranked Lady Bulldogs stand in second place (22 points) after one day while Arkansas (49.50) took an early team lead and Kentucky (19) stands in third.
The seventh-ranked Georgia men scored eight points for ninth place thus far. Arkansas (33), Florida (24) and Auburn (20) are the top three going into Saturday.
Georgia’s failure to qualify for track finals, however, dooms Georgia’s quests for SEC team championships. “We had a lot of goose eggs to in the qualifying rounds on the track,” said Georgia Head Track Coach Wayne Norton to Georgiadogs.com. “We cannot keep not qualifying people for finals if we want to be a top-level team so we have to work to improve that in the future. Since we will not have a lot of final events on the track, we will have to count on our field events to keep us in the top half of the conference finishers.”
The Georgia track men stand 1-2-6 with four of the seven heptathlon events completed. Junior Garrett Scantling scored a day one personal best of 3,392 to take the lead while junior Maicel Uibo’s 3,283 points have him in second. Sophomore Devon Williams is holding down sixth place with a personal-best day one tally of 3,023.
The SEC meet begins on Saturday with the final three events of the heptathlon at 10 a.m., starting with the 60-meter hurdles. The pole vault and 1000 will complete the hep’s seven events later in the day.
The first open events of day two are the women’s weight throw (Shelby Ashe), women’s high jump (Leontia Kallenou, Tatiana Gusin), women’s triple jump (Keturah Orji) and men’s pole vault at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. The first open event on the track is the women’s 60 hurdles at 2 p.m.
The SEC Network + will provide live links for SEC Championships on Saturday. Here is the broadcast info: 1:50 p.m.-6:30 p.m.: http://es.pn/1BmaBtZ
Kendell Williams and Chapman managed to score 16 points for the Lady Bulldogs thanks to finishing first and third, respectively, in the pentathlon competition. Also competing for Georgia was freshman Aliyah Johnson, who scored a collegiate career-best total of 3,611 for 12th place.
This marks the first SEC pentathlon crown for the Georgia women since Hyleas Fountain won back-to-back titles in 2003-04. Fountain also won the high jump and long jump at the 2004 meet before winning a silver medal in the heptathlon at the 2008 Olympics four years later.