Auburn's men's track and field team ranked sixth at the SEC indoor championship meet the weekend of Feb. 22-24 at the Randal Tyson Track Center in the University of Arkansas.
Both the men's and women's teams worked hard as some of the best teams from around the SEC gathered to compete.
"It was really a lot of highs and lows. Our men's team, I think, had a pretty solid meet," said Coach Ralph Spry. "We had a couple injuries that kept us from being a really upper, upper level team. We were three points out of fifth place, and I think 13 out of fourth, so it was a pretty good fight for the men."
The women's team is very young, according to Spry. They also had two key injuries on key athletes that hurt the team, so the women just have to take a step back and get them refocused and them going again.
Kai Selvon, senior, was one of the injured athletes. Spry said Selvon ran very well in the qualifiers, and it hurt the women when she was injured. Selvon was the runner-up at the championships last year.
Among the female athlete's that performed well was freshman, Jessie Johnson. Anytime an athlete can score as a freshman it says a lot about their abilities, Spry said.
"Our men's team was a little more poised and had a better competition, and our women's team was a little bit younger like our men's team was last year," Spry said. "It was fun on both sides, but we just traded places."
Stephen Saenz, junior, performed well at the shot-put at the meet. He was NCAA runner-up last year. This is his first SEC championship indoors and he had a really big mark, one of the top five or six marks posed in the country, Spry said.
Marcus Rowland, senior and winner at the 2010 championship meet, and Harry Adams, senior, both ran very well in the 60-meter dash, and Niklas Buhner had a big personal best in the men's 3000-meter.
"It went really well," Rowland said. "We haven't had much speed work done, but for the work that we have done and the way we performed it was pretty phenomenal. I got runner-up, my teammate Harry got fourth and we were excited. It's always good to win, but, you know, you have to take the losses with the wins."
Rowland scored in all of his events at the meet, and he said that is what you look for in conference meets like the SEC championship. He said if you can score you really help out your team.
"For me personally compared to the other ones, me and a few other people have had the most experience at those meets, so all the nervousness wasn't there," Rowland said. "I was calm and I knew what I was there to do. I pretty much got the mission done."
Spry said the men's and women's teams flip-flopped from last year, and he tries to balance that out by having a good collection of talent from all grade levels, so that when he loses a class he can reload it with quality.
"That's what is different last year," Spry said. "Last year the women's team was a lot more talented just like the men's team was this year, so we almost flipped roles."
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