A new era begins today when LSU track and field coach Dennis Shaver leads the Tigers into the Southeastern Conference Indoor Championships at Fayetteville, Ark., for their first major team competition under his reign.
Shaver was promoted to the head coaching job from an assistant’s position in August of last year when coaching legend Pat Henry left LSU for Texas A&M. Henry coached the Tigers to 27 national titles and 16 SEC championships in 17 seasons.
Shaver starts with a clean slate and will know by Sunday whether the track program claims their first title under his leadership.
“All of us want to go out there and run faster to show him the transition from coach Shaver to Pat Henry isn’t bad,” junior sprinter Kelly Willie said. “I don’t feel like it’s any new thing to him. He’s always had a take-charge attitude.”
The new coach said this meet means nothing more than any previous meet this season.
“It’s just another step toward the NCAA meet,” Shaver said.
Top-ranked Arkansas leads the sixth-ranked SEC teams on the men’s side followed closely by No. 3 Florida. The Tigers share the No. 8 ranking with Auburn, falling one spot from last week’s standings.
Willie said the atmosphere of the SEC meet is something he never forgets.
“The competition is great,” Willie said. “It’s another meet where everybody can come together.”
The men’s 4×400 relay team ranks first nationally led by Willie, who ranks fourth in the 400-meter individually.
“Every week we’ve been able to get faster,” Willie said. “We’re the type of team that basically runs with the competition. When we [compete against] a good team, we run fast. When the competition isn’t so great, we tend to just adapt to whatever environment we’re in.”
The Tigers’ relay team posted a season-best time of 3:06.52 at last weekend’s Twilight Invitational.
Three other teams posted faster times than LSU this year, but those runs came on tracks larger than 200 meters, which allows a team to run faster by making less turns.
Willie also posted his season-best in the 400 this past weekend in 46.18 seconds. In the SEC, only Florida’s Kerron Clement (45.73) and Arkansas’ Wallace Spearmon (46.18) have posted better times.
Xavier Carter — fourth, 200-meter — and Willie Bradley — sixth, triple jump — also ranked among the nation’s elite.
“There’s a lot riding on the line because this is a great facility to run a little faster,” Shaver said.
The Lady Tigers held their No. 2 ranking behind Stanford in the Trackwire 25 for the seventh consecutive week and will go into this weekend’s meet as the top-ranked SEC team.
Six of the 12 SEC women’s squads competing in this week’s meet earned a spot in the rankings, including No. 4 Tennessee, No. 5 Florida and No. 7 Auburn.
Senior sprinter Hazelann Regis ranks first individually in the 400-meter this week. She posted the SEC’s top mark of 51.62 seconds in the event on Feb. 5. Florida’s Tiandra Ponteen and South Carolina’s Natasha Hastings finished just hundredths of a second behind that time.
Regis also anchors the No. 1 Lady Tigers 4×400-meter relay team, which posted a season-best mark of 3:31.92 in New York on Feb. 5.
South Carolina posted the second-best time in the SEC with a 3:32.72 mark in the same meet.
Neisha Bernard-Thomas (second, 200-meter), Ashley Owens (third, 60-meter), and Tina Harris (fourth, long jump) also earned national rankings.
“It’s an important track meet for sure,” Shaver said. “On the women’s side with so many young athletes and inexperienced athletes that we have, their ability to adapt to that kind of a competitive environment … they’re just not prepared. They’ve got to go through it and they have to deal with the stresses that go along with that.”