BATON ROUGE – After opening the season by smashing LSU’s indoor school record in the shot put at the LSU Invitational on Jan. 9, Lady Tiger senior Tori Bliss eclipsed her own mark and extended her NCAA lead in the event with a winning throw of 57 feet, 4 ¾ inches to lead the LSU Track & Field teams in Saturday’s finale at the Rod McCravy Memorial Meet.
Just one season after scoring the NCAA Outdoor silver medal as the national runner-up in the shot put to cap her junior season, Bliss has quickly become a leading contender for the NCAA Indoor crown as she has now won three-straight titles to open her senior season while posting the four best shot put marks by a collegiate athlete in 2015.
Like Bliss, the Tigers are also national championship contenders in the 4×400-meter relay as the defending NCAA Indoor Champions in the event. They wrapped up this year’s Rod McCravy Memorial in one of the more exciting races of the weekend while emerging as the NCAA’s No. 2-ranked team this season with a seasonal-best time of 3 minutes, 4.28 seconds for second place.
While also running the second leg of LSU’s relay, senior Quincy Downing cracked the Top 5 of the national rankings in the 400-meter dash with a season-opening time of 46.74 seconds in a third-place finish.
It proved to be another step forward for the Tigers and Lady Tigers while competing at this season’s Rod McCravy Memorial Meet as they brought home one school record, three event wins, eight new indoor personal records and eight performances that rank among the NCAA’s Top 16 on the national list in two days of competition at Kentucky’s Nutter Field House.
“It’s important for us to build on each competition with the way we prepare and in the way we compete as a team, and I’m pleased with the way our athletes approached the meet this weekend,” said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. “It’s important for us to take the steps necessary to be where we want to be as a team when we go to the SEC and NCAA Championships in the coming weeks.”
There might not be a more dominant athlete in her event than Bliss to start the 2015 season as she is now a perfect 3-for-3 in shot put competitions following Saturday’s victory at the Rod McCravy Memorial Meet.
Bliss took a commanding lead with an opening throw of 55-10 ½ in the first round and never looked back while taking the title over Missouri’s duo of Jill Rushin (54-1 ¼) in second place and Kearsten Peoples (53-11 ¾) in third place in the final. She extended her lead with a throw of 55-11 in the fifth round before ending with a new lifetime best of 57-4 ¾ in the sixth round to raise her national-leading mark in the event.
A native of Portage, Indiana, Bliss eclipsed her own indoor school record by two inches after opening the season with a throw of 57-2 ¾ at the LSU Indoor Invitational. With her victory on Saturday, Bliss now boasts four marks better than any other shot putter in the NCAA with throws of 56-8 ¾ and 57-2 ¾ at the LSU Indoor Invitational, 56-4 ½ at the Auburn Indoor Invitational and 57-4 ¾ on Saturday.
It was a performance that also smashed her previous lifetime PR of 57-4 ¼ that she set in a silver-medal-winning runner-up finish at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships a season ago.
Downing, an NCAA Indoor Championships qualifier in the 400-meter dash a year ago, has fired out of the blocks in his senior season after clocking a season-opening 46.74 for a third-place finish in the men’s final during Saturday’s action. The second-fastest collegian in the field, Downing crossed the finish line in the first section behind unattached athlete Brycen Spratling (46.55) and Texas’ Zack Bilderback (46.70) to emerge as the No. 4-ranked 400-meter runner in the NCAA rankings for the 2015 season.
Downing later returned to the track to run the second leg for the Tigers in the 4×400-meter relay in what proved to be one of the most anticipated races of the weekend that also featured the powerful Florida Gators.
And it turned into a two-horse race for the title as the Tigers, the reigning NCAA Indoor Champions in the event, crossed the finish line just six one-hundredths of a second behind their Southeastern Conference rivals. The Tigers turned in the nation’s second-fastest time this season at 3:04.28 to finish runner-up to the Gators’ winning time of 3:04.22.
Downing teamed with junior Darrell Bush on the first leg, junior Cyril Grayson on the third leg and senior Vernon Norwood on the anchor leg to run the third-fastest relay time in school history on an oversized track and solidify their position as an early-season favorite to defend their national championship from a season ago. LSU’s entered the weekend with a previous seasonal best of 3:07.65 in the event.
The Tigers and Lady Tigers also combined to qualify six athletes into championship finals in the 60-meter dash and 60-meter hurdles on the final day of competition at the Rod McCravy Memorial Track & Field Meet.
Senior Mariah Georgetown clocked back-to-back seasonal bests with times of 8.48 in the preliminary round and 8.40 in the final in a seventh-place finish in the women’s 60-meter hurdles, while freshman Mikiah Brisco (7.33), freshman Aleia Hobbs (7.43) and sophomore Jada Martin (7.43) finished in seventh place, eighth place and ninth place, respectively, in the women’s 60-meter dash.
Two Tigers also lined up in the final of the men’s 60-meter hurdles as sophomore Jordan Moore clocked 7.94 for fifth place in his LSU debut and senior Joshua Thompson ran 7.95 for sixth place in the event.
Four other Lady Tigers turned in new indoor PRs during Saturday’s finale at Kentucky’s Rod McCravy Memorial, including sophomore Danielle Avery (2:12.71) and freshman Hannah Deworth (2:16.27) in the 800 meters, freshman Danielle Phillips (8.88) in the 60-meter hurdles and freshman Bria Druilhet (38-8 ¼) in the triple jump.
With the 2015 indoor season now in full swing, the Tigers and Lady Tigers will make their first of three trips to the Randal Tyson Track Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, next weekend when they line up at the Razorbacks Invitational running Jan. 30-31 at the University of Arkansas. The Razorbacks will also play host to the Tyson Invitational on Feb. 13-14 and the NCAA Indoor Championships on March 13-14 to end the season.