STARKVILLE, Miss. – Nataliyah Friar has had a knack of jumping her best in the final round throughout her sophomore season this spring, and she certainly saved her best for last once again Friday when she soared a career-best 21 feet, 10 ¾ inches to claim All-SEC honors as the SEC Outdoor Silver Medalist in the long jump at the Mike Sanders Track Complex.
Friar actually took sixth place into the women’s long jump final after opening with a top qualifying mark of 20-8 ½ (+0.4) in the first round to set a new wind-legal outdoor personal best in the event.
She improved to fifth place in the fourth round with an improved wind-aided mark of 20-11 ¾ (+2.8), but was surpassed in the fifth round and dropped back into sixth place as she was unable to improve her standing in another wind-aided attempt of 20-7. It was a position in which Friar seemed to find herself all too often this season.
“I just said, ‘Last jump, I’m used to jumping far on my last jump. You don’t even think about anything, just go out there and jump,’” Friar said of her mindset when stepping onto the runway for one final time on Friday. “I don’t know if I hit all the board. I just heard the board, popped up and kept flying. I looked to the side, and I was like, ‘This is over 21 feet.’ I really didn’t know for sure until I saw the tape.”
After Friar climbed out of the pit on her final jump and heard the official call out her mark of “six meters, sixty-seven,” her All-SEC status was sealed as she soared four spots up the leaderboard and into second place in the event to score the long jump silver medal and highlight Friday’s action for the Tigers and Lady Tigers at the 2015 SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
Alabama’s Quanesha Burks took the lead in the fifth round with a jump of 22-1 ½ before extending her lead in the final round with an effort of 22-5 ¼, ultimately winning the SEC title over Friar by mere inches.
Georgia’s Keturah Orji captured the bronze medal in the long jump final with a series-best leap of 21-8 ¼, followed by Georgia’s Chanice Porter (21-5 ¼w) in fourth place, Kentucky’s Sha’Keela Saunders (21-4 ¾) in fifth place, Kentucky’s Kenyatta Hackworth (21-3 ¼w) in sixth place, Florida’s Darrielle McQueen (20-6 ½w) in seventh place and South Carolina’s Alexis Murphy (20-5w) in eighth place to round out the scorers.
“I was going out on my last one because my friend, Quanesha Burks from Alabama, we’ve been jumping against each other since high school at summer track meets,” Friar shared. “Her fifth jump, she went 22 feet. So I was like, ‘Okay, let me try to go after her.’ It didn’t come on my fifth jump, but I knew I had one (jump) left. I just cleared my mind after that and went for it on my last one.”
Friar is showing the same determination outdoors that earned her top honors jumping her best in the sixth round for fourth at the SEC Indoor Championships and third at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
Friar moved up three spots from seventh place to fourth place with an indoor personal-best jump of 20-9 ¾ in the final round at the SEC Indoor Championships that also secured her a qualifying mark to the NCAA meet in March. She raised her indoor PR again in the final round at the NCAA Indoor Championships when she moved from sixth place to third place with a lifetime best of 21-0 for the first 21-foot jump of her career.
While earning her first career All-SEC honor as the SEC Outdoor Silver Medalist on Friday afternoon, Friar also became the NCAA’s No. 2-ranked long jumper under all conditions during the 2015 outdoor season.
But Friar’s eight points in her second-place finish were not the first points scored on the day by the Lady Tigers as junior Shanice Hall cleared a seasonal-best height of 5-8 ¾ to claim fifth place in the women’s high jump earlier in the day and add four more points to the Lady Tigers’ team total on the afternoon.
Following a second-attempt clearance at 5-5 and a first-attempt clearance at 5-7, Hall approached the high jump pit for one final jump at 5-8 ¾ after fouling each of her first two attempts at the height. She cleared went up and over the bar with ease for a new seasonal best while securing her place in the scoring positions for the first time in her career at the SEC Championships. Sophomore teammate Briana Kelly just missed scoring in her first SEC Outdoor Championships as she cleared the bar at 5-7 to tie for ninth place in the competition.
The Lady Tigers are on the board for the first time as they wrapped up Friday’s action with 12 points to their credit through two days of competition. The Tigers have totaled four points to this point of the weekend.
The teams have certainly positioned themselves for a furious finish to this year’s SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships after qualifying another 13 athletes into conference finals during Friday’s preliminary races on the track. Seven Tigers and six Lady Tigers earned lanes in Saturday’s finals as both teams have qualified a total of 11 finalists through two days of prelims.
“We’ve done just about all we can do as a team to this point to give ourselves the best opportunity to finish strong when we come back here tomorrow,” said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. “I’m very proud of the way in which our athletes have approached this meet to this point, but we have another big day tomorrow. They’ve worked hard to get to this point, so now it’s important that they finish the job.”
Six athletes qualified for Saturday’s finals with personal bests on the afternoon, including a pair of heat winners with sophomore Jordan Moore hurdling a wind-legal best of 13.58 (+1.5) to win his heat of the men’s 110 hurdles and freshman Aleia Hobbs sprinting to a wind-legal best of 11.26 (+1.6) to win her heat of the women’s 100 meters.
Moore will be joined in the final of the men’s 110-meter hurdles by senior teammate and All-America hopeful Joshua Thompson, who raced to the second-fastest time of the day with a career-best wind-aided time of 13.54 (+2.6) for a runner-up finish in the first heat. Moore’s winning run of 13.58 in the second heat was the third-fastest of the day and moved him up two spots to No. 5 on LSU’s all-time list in the event.
Hobbs (11.26) slashed more than one tenth of a second off of her previous PR of 11.39 in the 100-meter dash as she also ran the third-fastest time of the day in her event. Fellow freshman Mikiah Brisco raced to a new wind-legal personal best of her own at 11.31 for the fifth-fastest time of the round, while sophomore Jada Martin nabbed the ninth and final qualifying spot in the final with a wind-aided 11.39.
Two Lady Tigers advanced to Saturday’s final in the 100-meter hurdles with personal bests as junior Chanice Chase (13.13) and freshman Daeshon Gordon (13.21) finished 2-3 in the second preliminary race, running the fourth-fastest and sixth-fastest times of the day in the qualifying round. Both Chase and Gordon have also qualified to run in the final of the women’s 400 hurdles on Saturday.
Rounding out the Lady Tigers qualifying for finals on Friday afternoon was sophomore Travia Jones, who earned a lane in an SEC final for the first time in her career with a PR of 54.10 for the 400-meter dash.
Like the women’s 100 meters, three Tigers advanced to the final of the men’s 400-meter dash on the afternoon, led by the NCAA’s leading performer in the event in senior Vernon Norwood with a run of 45.55 to take the tape in the first heat with the second-fastest time of the day. Juniors Fitzroy Dunkley (46.63) and Darrell Bush (46.81) each advanced on time as the seventh-fastest and eighth-fastest qualifiers in the event.
The Tigers wrapped up Friday’s qualifying with the two fastest qualifiers in the men’s 100-meter dash as senior Aaron Ernest (10.09w) and sophomore Tremayne Acy (10.12w) each won their prelim heats with ease this afternoon. They are also ready to run in the men’s 200-meter final on the meet’s final day on Saturday afternoon.
“When you have so many athletes lining up and running the fastest they’ve run all year and winning their heats and things like that, it shows that they came to this meet with the right mindset to go out and compete in a championship environment,” Shaver added. “We need to keep this momentum going into tomorrow and treat it just like a whole new track meet.”
In other action on Friday afternoon, senior Tori Bliss threw a series-best of 153-8 for 10th place in the women’s discus throw and freshman Christian Johnson ran 9:29.99 for 13th place in the men’s 3,000 steeplechase.
The competition will come to an end for the LSU Track & Field teams on Saturday with their first field-event finals on the afternoon at 1 p.m. CT followed by the first championship finals on the track at 3 p.m. Saturday’s event schedule goes through the running of the men’s and women’s 4×400-meter relays at approximately 6:45 p.m. at Mississippi State’s Mike Sanders Track Complex.
Saturday’s finale at the 2015 SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships will feature live streaming video of events online at ESPN3.com and through the SEC Network+ on the WatchESPN from 2:50-6:50 p.m. CT.
Mississippi State University in conjunction with Branch Sports Technology will provide live results throughout the weekend at the SEC Outdoor Championships events are available at http://branchsportstech.com. Fans can also receive live updates and behind-the-scenes coverage of the Tigers and Lady Tigers with liking LSU Track & Field on Facebook at http://facebook.com/lsutrackfield and by following @LSUTrackField on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lsutrackfield and Instagram at http://instagram.com/lsutrackfield.