Evans & Saunders Receive SEC Weekly Honors
May 6, 2014
LEXINGTON, Ky. – A pair of Kentucky Wildcats, Andrew Evans and Sha’Keela Saunders, earned weekly awards from the Southeastern Conference on Tuesday.
Evans – who was named National Athlete of the Week by the United States Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association (USTFCCCA) on Monday – picked up SEC Men’s Field Athlete of the Week. Saunders was named SEC Freshman of the Week.
Evans won the Tennessee Challenge discus with a throw of 66.37m/217-9 – No. 3 in the world for 2014 – to move past defending NCAA discus champion Julian Wruck of UCLA both on the 2014 and all-time performers list.
The senior’s mark is more than 18 feet farther than any of his preceding meets in this year and almost 12 feet better than his former PR of 206-0 (62.78m) in a Bronze Medal performance at the 2013 NCAA Championships.
Evans’ 217-9 bettered Wruck’s official collegiate best of 217-7 (66.32m) to jump to No. 4 on the all-time collegiate performers list with the fifth-best throw in collegiate history (Wruck has thrown further in a non-competitive exhibition).
He added another all-time top-10 throw at 216-8 (66.06m) to take the No. 9 spot. He joins Wruck and Nevada’s Kamy Keshmiri as the only three men with two all-time top-10 throws.
His 58-10 (17.93m) shot put effort to finish sixth was also a career best.
Saunders had a career-best performance in the long jump with a mark of 6.38m/20-11.25 to finish as the top collegian, and second overall at the Longhorn Invitational in Austin, Texas.
She extended her UK freshman record by 4.25 inches, coming up just .75 inches short of the UK school record.
Saunders leads all SEC freshmen this season, ranks fourth in the conference overall and eight nationally.
She also ran a wind-aided PR 24.03 to claim 19th in the 200m.
With Evans’ honor UK has had the SEC Field Athlete of the Week two of the last three times it was awarded as Raymond Dykstra picked up the honor two weeks ago.
Kentucky will host the SEC Championships from May 15-18.