Women's Track Prepares for SEC Championships
5/13/2009 12:00:00 AM
May 13, 2009
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - The Alabama women's track and field team will be competing at the SEC Outdoor Track and Field Championships being held in Gainesville, Fla. May 14-17. The women's squad is coming off a 10th place finish at the SEC Indoor Championships and finished ninth at the 2008 outdoor meet. The meet will be taped and will air on FSN on May 23 at 5 p.m.
Alabama finished ninth in 2008 at the SEC Championships held at Auburn. The Crimson Tide won the meet in 1986 and 1994 and finished in second place five times with the latest coming in 1988.
The Crimson Tide has posted 13 regional marks this season with three ranking among the nation's top 25. True freshman Krystle Schade is eighth in the high jump. Kim Laing and Angelica Howard are both ranked 15th in the country in the 100m hurdles and hammer throw, respectively.
Alabama has seven athletes ranked among the top five in the conference led by Schade who is the only SEC leader on the squad as she tied for first in the high jump with a leap of 6-0. Laing, however, has been taking huge chunks of time in the hurdles over the past few weeks and has lowered her personal best from 13.51 to 13.28 to grab hold of the second fastest time in the conference.
Howard has also improved drastically in the hammer throw over the past year as she bettered her previous personal best of 158-2 with a heave of 197-5 to rank second among the SEC's best throwers. Rachel Robbs is the only athlete on the team that has touched the qualifiers for the NCAA Championships though with her provisional mark of 5,101 points in the heptathlon.
High jumper, true freshman Krystle Schade has impressed this season with her SEC leading (tied with Brittani Carter from LSU) leap of 6-0. Previous best was 5-10 in high school.
Players Mentioned
