Preview: Gators Track And Field At The Men’s National Championships
The Florida Gators track and field men’s team are on a mission. After winning four outdoor national titles in the span of six years, Florida hasn’t brought home the first place trophy from the outdoor meet since 2017 (they did win the indoor title as recently as 2019).
The action gets underway in Eugene, Oregon on Wednesday and the following is the pathway that Florida must take to get back on top of the podium.
Meet Format
While the meet will take place over four days, the men will compete Wednesday and Friday while the women will compete Thursday and Saturday. Wednesday will be mostly prelims with some finals and Friday will be all finals.
Scoring will be standard track and field scoring, with 10 points going to 1st place all the way down to one point going to 8th.
In general, the target score on the men’s side is 60 points to win the title. While teams have won the meet with less, since 1985 only one squad has topped 60 points and not gone on to win the meet (Florida in 2014).
For almost every track event that has prelims, there will be three heats of eight. The top two in each heat plus the next three fastest times will move on to the finals on Friday.
Where The Gators Stand
In the latest USTFCCCA Track And Field rankings, Florida is ranked 6th nationally. These rankings are strictly driven by a computer algorithm.
The Gators track team also finished 4th at the SEC Outdoor Championships.
Both the rankings and the conference meet reward depth, but at the National Championship a team can win relying on just a handful of top performers. All four previous times Florida won the outdoor title they did not win the conference meet that year.
List Of When Florida Athletes Compete On Wednesday
4 X 100 Relay, 7:32 PM, Heat One:
Florida comes into this event with the top overall time in the country, running 38.47 back in March. The Gators won this event at the SEC Championship but were only 7th at East Regional qualifying meet.
Sometimes squads do just enough to qualify at the regional meet and if Florida has any shot of making the podium, the 4 X 100 will be a major step.
Florida can’t score any points in this event on Wednesday, but they sure could lose them with a bad baton exchange. Look for Florida to make clean passes to make it safely to finals.
Javelin, 8:45 PM, Flight One:
Mark Porter is the only field event representative Florida has at the meet. This event will be finals on Wednesday and points will be awarded. Porter enters the meet seeded 13th, within two meters of the top eight. Any points Porter can steal would be a massive win for Florida.
100 Meter Dash, 8:46 PM, Heats One and Two:
Joseph Fahnbulleh and Dedrick Vanover will represent Gators track in the 10 second race. Fahnbulleh had an absolutely massive meet at East Regionals, entering ranked 35th nationally in the event, and leaving as the second seed coming into Nationals after running 10.04.
Vanover comes in ranked 19th nationally but is in a heat where the runners ranked two through eight are all within .07 of each other for the second auto spot into finals.
If Fahnbulleh can perform like he did at regionals, and Vanover can have a season best time, the Gators can move two into the 100 finals and steal some points.
400 Meter Dash, 9:00 PM, Heats One and Two:
Ryan Willie, Jacory Patterson, and Champion Allison will lead the way for Florida in the event Florida will have to get massive points from if they have any chance of making the podium. All three of these runners enter the meet ranked in the top eight nationally.
Champion was the, well, um, you see, champion at the SEC meet with a time of 44.74
200 Meter Dash, 9:44 PM, Heat Three:
Joseph Fahnbulleh is back and will enter the meet after his jaw dropping 19.85 at the East Regional meet.
He shouldn’t have too much issue making it through to the finals, though he is in the same heat as two of the other three men who have also gone under 20 seconds this season in the event. Micha Harris from Texas ran 19.79 at the Big 12 Championships, and Georgia’s Matthew Boling ran 19.92 back in April
4 X 400 Meter Relay, 10:48 PM, Heat Three:
Another event where Florida enters with the top time nationally after they ran 2:58.53 at their home meet in April. Florida also won this event at the SEC Championships.
USC, Baylor, and Arkansas will push Florida in their heat, but expect the Gators to do just enough to qualify for finals before cracking it up.
Pathway To A Florida Gators Track Victory
Again, the Gators track team can’t win the National Title on Wednesday, but they can lose it. Florida has almost zero margin for error and will need just about everyone who steps foot on the track to make it to finals on Friday.
For Florida to get to 60 points and have a chance on Friday, the 4 X 100 will need to start things off with a win. Then in the 100, either Fahnbulleh needs to win or Vanover makes the finals with him and they combine for at least 10 points.
It will then come down to the 400. As it stands now, if the three Gators involved finish where they are ranked (3rd, 7th and 8th) they would combine for nine points. Florida will have to squeeze at least 20 points out of this event.
If Florida is sitting at 40 points after the 400, a win by Fahnbulleh in the 200 and a win by the Gators 4 x 400 would get them to 60.
From there, their fate is out of their hands but Florida will be able to say they did everything they could do to bring home another title to Gainesville for the Gators track team.
You can view heat sheets for the meet here
You can view rankings in all events here
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