Indoor track and field season comes to a close in Winston Salem for SAC Championships
After three months of continued action indoors for Carson-Newman track and field, it comes down to the South Atlantic Conference Indoor Championships in Winston Salem, N.C. Saturday and Sunday.
South Atlantic Conference Track and Field Indoor Championships Performance List
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – After three months of continued action indoors for Carson-Newman track and field, it comes down to the South Atlantic Conference Indoor Championships in Winston Salem, N.C. Saturday and Sunday.
A total of 10 days of competition spread out over three months in two states has led the Eagles to the conference stage, where the team finished third on the men's side and sixth in the women's division in 2019, respectively. Coach David Needs said entering into the meet, his expectations are shifted from achieving personal best times to beating opponents head-to-head.
"We talked in our meeting yesterday about this being the first meet this year where we don't really care as much about time or distance as much as we care about place," Needs said. "And that's different, because most of the time we're worried about trying to qualify for nationals, and we still are, but I want them to beat somebody from Wingate or beat somebody from Tusculum, or Queens, Lenoir-Rhyne or whoever we go against. It's more important about place than anything else."
For the men, junior sprinter Devon Moore (Baxley, Ga.) will continue to turn the heads of any spectator in attendance as he looks to win his first indoor title in his career. Teammate Toot Johnson (Rincon, Ga.), as well as the likes of Austin Greer (Simpsonville, S.C.) and Ross Ensley (Bryson City, N.C.) will also enter the SAC meet looking to make the finals of a stacked field of 38 sprinters in the 60 and 44 athletes in the 200.
"As you go through the heats and the fastest time advances and the next two or three times advance to the finals, so that preparation of getting a good seed time so that you're in a good heat where you can control your destiny is more important than looking at some of the other things…" Needs said. "Kieran (Showler-Davis) has done a really good job of making sure they're championship ready, and we feel like where we are as a team, our athletes are going to continue to progress.
"A lot of meets we may have them run the 60 and the 200, or the 200 and the 400, this meet we've been really selective as to where we place those athletes so we can maximize their points."
Distance runners Conal McCambridge (United Kingdom) and Rachel Strayer (Chattanooga, Tenn.) stand out among a unit that has continued to develop over the course of the season. Controlling the pace of the run will be crucial to their success, as well as not being caught in running somebody else's race and focusing on individual success.
Long jumpers Theo Devillard (France) and Courtavious Garrett (Greenwood, Fla.) as well as high jumpers Danilo Cardoso (Brazil) and Christian Shouse (Jacksboro, Tenn.) highlight a unit that has claimed a flurry of podium finishes over the course of the indoor season with Cardoso and Shouse both provisionally qualifying for the national championships later this year in the high jump.
"Tyler (Stepp) has done a really good job with our jumpers, making sure that, again, they're championship ready…in each event, it's about being smart and getting to the finals and then letting it loose in the finals to see that you can get the marks and the kind of distances that you really need to get."
Throwers such as Austin Gramann (Jefferson City, Tenn.) and Draven Green (Buford, Ga.) enter the meet refreshed and ready to roll after having the month to prepare in both the weight throw and shot put.
"Our throwers are a very tight knit group, a very strong group that really does a great job working together to be successful," Needs said. "We have a group of men and women that are working together and will push each other."
Sophomore Abby Hegarty, senior Tia Davis (Chattanooga, Tenn.), and freshman Faith Nelms (St. Petersburg, Fla.) highlight a female sprinters group that continues to chip away at personal bests and improve times toward earning a spot on the conference podium.
High jumpers Hannah Beth Moorhouse (Morristown, Tenn.) and Nathalie Schumacher (Germany) stand out in a group where Schumacher has already secured a provisional mark for nationals.
Most important in this meet when it's said and done isn't the hardware and it isn't the points, however. While winning is stressed on each athlete in their respective event, the personal development is paramount.
"Our relationship with them is not transactional, like, 'Hey, they run fast so we like them,'" Needs said. "We're going to love them regardless of what they do, but we want to do is share in that joy with them because they are performing at such a level – their very best level – against conference competition so that they can be so successful that they get on the medal stand or they go from coming in as the 20th seed and they finish as the 10th seed.
"It's about personal development. Yes, we want points and we want to compete for a conference championship. But we also want these athletes to be the very best they can be."
Action from the JDL Fast is slated to take place beginning at 12:30 p.m. Saturday and 11:30 a.m Sunday.
