Women's Track and Field Team Heads to SEC Championships
2/26/2004 12:00:00 AM
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The Alabama women’s track and field team’s indoor season hits high gear this weekend with the Southeastern Conference Championships which gets underway Friday in Nutter Fieldhouse on the Kentucky campus.
Head coach Sandy Fowler will take a contingent of 14 athletes to what is widely considered the nation’s fastest conference meet. The Crimson Tide already has seven NCAA provisional qualifying marks going into the weekend, including three from sophomore sprinter Beau Walker.
Walker ran career best marks in the 200 and 400-meter dash as well as the 60m hurdles at the Iowa State Classic two weeks ago, posting NCAA marks in all three. She is ranked in the conference’s top-10 in all three events.
Fellow hurdler Tasha Pharr has also posted a provisional mark in the 60m hurdles. Pharr, a junior, also rode a triple jump effort of 41 feet and 11 inches in the Tide’s season opening event at Nutter Fieldhouse to an NCAA qualifying mark. Pharr is ranked in the league’s top-10 in the hurdles and third in the triple jump.
The Tide will be looking to solidify those standards as well as pickup a few more. In particular, sophomore thrower Aymara Albury will be looking to make an NCAA mark in the weight throw. Albury already has a provisional mark in the shot put where she posted a throw of 51 feet and 7.25 inches to become the second best shot putter in Tide history. She will have to add half a meter to her current best in the weight to eclipse the provisional standard.
Sophomore thrower Beth Mallory, who set a personal best and NCAA provisional mark of 61-11.25 in the weight throw earlier in the year, will be looking to better that mark this weekend.
The SEC Championships will feature a first for the Tide during the Fowler era. Freshman Kendall Clifford is the first pentathlete to compete for Alabama since Fowler took over the team in 1997.
The championships start with the pentathlon Friday afternoon and continues through Sunday evening.
