UKTF to Take on NCAA Indoor Championships This Weekend

COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The No. 3 ranked Kentucky women’s track and field team, and No. 17 ranked UK men’s team will compete at the 2018 NCAA Indoor Championships this weekend inside Texas A&M’s Gilliam Indoor Stadium.
 
ESPN3 will stream the meet live starting at 6:30 p.m. ET on March 9 and starting at 5 p.m. ET March 10. A re-air of the championship will be shown on ESPN2 Sunday, March 11 starting at 7 p.m. ET.
 
The Kentucky track and field program will have 10 women’s, and four men’s entries. UK’s 10 women’s entries are the fifth most of any team in the field. UK’s four men’s entries are tied for 20th most.
 
The No. 3-ranked UK women’s team has the same number of entries as a year ago. The No. 18-ranked UK men’s team doubled its number of entries from a year ago.
 
“I think the team got together and decided they have legitimate a chance to do something special,” UK sixth-year head coach Edrick Floéal said. “How special? It will depend on the other teams too. They have a say also, but I think the goal for us is to just try to do the best we can.”
 
Ninety-three men’s programs and 84 women’s programs will be represented at the Chamionships.
 
The top-16 declared entries, and top-12 declared relay teams from marks recorded this season qualified for the Championships.
 
The top-eight scorers in each of the 17 events on the men’s and women’s sides will score points by virtue of their place finish on a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. The team with the most points at the end of the meet wins.

A UKTF schedule snapshot
The meet will start for Kentucky at 1 p.m. ET when the men’s heptathlon commences with newly crowned SEC Field Athlete of the Year Timothy Duckworth coming in with the NCAA-leading score this season, 6,071, recorded in January. He took silver in the event last year.

The track action for the meet starts Friday at 6:35 p.m., but SEC Freshman of the Year Sydney McLaughlin will be the first Wildcat on the track tomorrow night in the 400m prelims at 7:40 p.m.
 
Individual field events start at 6:15 p.m., and Marie- Josée Ebwea-Bile will be the only Wildcat in field action on Friday in the women’s long jump at 8:10 p.m.

The men’s heptathlon restarts Saturday at 1 p.m. ET. The women’s triple jump with Ebwea-Bile and Latavia Coombs begins at 4:30 p.m., with Olivia Gruver in the women’s pole vault following at 5 p.m.

Track action on Saturday starts at 5:10 p.m.
 
The UKTF at NCAA Indoor Championships precedent
The UK women’s team earned its best team finish at an NCAA Indoor Championship a year ago, fifth place with 25 points.
 
The UK men’s team’s best NCAA indoor team finish was seventh in 1996 with 22 points. A year ago, the UK men’s team finished tied for 22nd with 10 points as Tim Duckworth claimed silver in the heptathlon, and Nick Anderson placed seventh in the 60-meter hurdles.

The UKTF weekend breakdown
UK’s NCAA Indoor Championships returners are led by Duckworth, top-seed in the men’s heptathlon, after taking silver last year. Duckworth qualified for NCAA Indoors for the third year in a row.
 
Olivia Gruver qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships for the second year in a row, and owns the No. 1 clearance in the country this season. She took bronze at NCAA Indoor last season before winning the national title outdoors.
 
Marie-Josée Ebwea-Bile qualified for her first NCAA Championships indoors a year ago, and this season qualified in both the triple jump and long jump. She made a breakthrough at the 2017 NCAA Outdoor Championships, claiming silver.
 
The other Wildcats to qualify in multiple individual events are recently crowned SEC Champions Jasmine Camacho-Quinn (60m hurdles and 200m) and Sydney McLaughlin (200m and 400m).

“I think the double is difficult,” Floréal said. “A lot of people have tried and kind of fell apart. And Sydney is sort of fearless … She just wants to double because she wants to just help the team. It was kind of cool having that meeting where the athletes said, ‘no, I want to do the double because I think I can score more points.’

“It’s just all the team effort, same with Jasmine, same with Marie-Josée. It’s good have the team sort of going all in for each other. Sydney is kind of the performance leader of that group. She kind of sets the tone and everybody else kind of goes for it.”
 
Camacho-Quinn is top seed in the 60m hurdles, and McLaughlin is top seed in the 200m. Camacho-Quinn qualified in both events last season, placing seventh in the hurdles. 
 
SEC 5k Champion Jacob Thomson is the No. 7 seed in that event. He qualified for his first NCAA Indoor Championships.

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