Feb. 23, 2012
The Vanderbilt track and field team heads to Kentucky this weekend for the SEC Indoors Championships, culminating an indoor season marked by new personal and school records.
It has been a season of pushing the limits for the Commodores, as the women broke old personal records and set new school records across several events. They hope to bring that mentality of pushing limits to the Championship meet this weekend, where they’ll look to score in more events than they have in the past.
“Most everybody has performed at or above their all time best and that’s a good gauge of progress,” said Head Coach Steve Keith. “The number of school records we’ve had is what you would like to see. We’ve got room to grow as far as school records an we’re moving in the right direction.”
Keith has been steadily building both the track and field and cross country programs over the past several years with a patience that earned the cross country team their first SEC championship this past fall.
“We understand that the SEC is the best conference in the country,” said Keith. “We’ve proved our level in some areas and we’re working to prove our level in some other areas.”
Freshman Janetra Gleaves will compete in the Pentathlon on Friday, including the 60m hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump, and 800m events.
Saturday, the team takes to the field for the women’s pole vault, along with the 60m hurdles, mile, 400m, and 3K; they’ll compete in the high jump, 5K, and distance relay on Sunday.
“Hopefully we can get off to a good start with the vault,” said Keith. “I think with the girls who have been floating around our school record level, those are the ones we’d like to see score a few points. The high jump leads off the day Sunday. Both those events, we’d like to get some positive momentum going into the other events. Once that starts happening, stranger things have happened than ‘you did what, you scored what?'”
Follow the meet here, with news, live results, and more: http://www.secdigitalnetwork.com/SECSPORTS/CHAMPIONSHIPS/IndoorTrackandFieldChampionships.aspx