FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — A pair of highly-touted freshmen put themselves in a position to qualify for the NCAA Championships by turning in strong personal best performances to lead the LSU track and field teams on the first day of the Tyson Invitational on Friday.
Lady Tiger newcomer LaTavia Thomas will likely return to the Randal Tyson Track Center for the NCAA Indoor Championships in March after clocking a solid provisional qualifying time and new personal best of 2:06.44 to take second place in the women’s 800-meter competition.
The Philadelphia native, who signed with LSU a year ago as the top 800-meter recruit in the country for the Class of 2006, moves into the No. 4 spot on the school’s all-time indoor performance list, while senior Meisue Francis also qualified provisionally for the NCAA meet with a season-best time of 2:07.76 to take fifth place in the event.
“I was very proud of LaTavia Thomas running a time that will probably get her into the NCAA meet,” said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. “We know there’s still room for her to improve, but she still ran a great time today. LaTavia, and even Meisue Francis, ran smart races today and it was great to see them come to a meet like this and perform very well.”
Freshman Will Coppage, who won the long jump title at the National Scholastic Indoor Championships a year ago with a then personal-best leap of 24 feet, 11 inches as a high school senior, improved with an NCAA provisional qualifying mark of 25-2 ? to take fifth in the event on Friday. Coppage becomes the first Tiger to long jump more than 25 feet this season.
Sophomore all-conference performer Jeremy Hicks also improved upon his provisional qualifying mark of 24-9 ? set at the Modrall Sperling Lobo Invitational earlier this year with a season-best leap of 24-10 ? in Friday’s championship finals. Shaver said this is the kind of improvement he expected to see from LSU’s jumps corps this weekend.
“It was also great to see Will Coppage perform the way we all know he can perform at this meet and in this facility,” said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. “Jeremy Hicks also had a seasonal best in the long jump, which was the type of performance we wanted to see out of this group this weekend. Those are really good signs for us moving forward.”
A pair of LSU quarter milers also clocked personal bests in their specialty event led by the effort of senior All-American Siraj Williams, who ran an indoor personal best time of 47.17 to qualify provisionally for the NCAA Championships in the 400 meters. Fellow 400-meter standout and All-American Marvin Stevenson clocked a PR of his own at 47.41 seconds.
“We did a pretty good job in the men’s 400 with a few of the guys and Siraj Williams and Marvin Stevenson turning in personal bests,” Shaver said. “I thought we could have done a little bit better in the 400 because this is a fast track for our guys to run on, but the guys were still able to do some things that were good for us to see.”
Junior hurdles standout Jessica Ohanaja saw her streak of four-straight titles in the women’s 60-meter hurdles come to an end on Friday as she took third place in the event with a time of 8.24 in the finals. Candice Davis of Southern California won the event crown by running the nation’s second-fastest time this season by a collegiate athlete with a sizzling 8.09 in the final heat.
In addition to the performances of Coppage and Thomas during the afternoon session, freshmen Josh Dominguez and Kim Williams kicked off the meet by posting indoor personal best marks in the pole vault and weight throw, respectively. Dominguez cleared 16-4 ? in his specialty event, while Williams posted a collegiate best mark of her own at 50-6 ? in the weight throw.
The Tigers and Lady Tigers return to the Randal Tyson Track Center on Saturday for the final day of competition as both the track events and field events are set to begin at 10 a.m. The meet will conclude with the running of the men’s and women’s 4×400-meter relays beginning at 4:15 p.m.