The LSU track and field teams fell short of another Southeastern Conference championship at the SEC Indoor Championships in Gainesville, Fla., last weekend.
The Lady Tigers finished in fourth place with 87 points, while the men’s team grabbed sixth place in the meet.
Arkansas swept both the men and the women’s competition in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center posting 120 points on the men’s side and 129 points on the women’s.
Florida finished second with 90.5 points in the men’s competition and third in the women’s with 105 points, while South Carolina came up third in the men’s with 78.5 points and second place in the women’s with 108.5 points.
“We had some really good things happen,” said LSU track and field head coach Pat Henry. “We came in limping a little bit on the men’s side with injuries to some key athletes, but we still pulled out quality performances.”
All-American Muna Lee became the first woman in SEC history to win the 200-meter run three years in a row at the SEC Indoors. She posted a winning time of 23.26 seconds.
Lee fell just two one-hundredths of a second short of defending her SEC title in the 55-meter dash. Auburn’s Elva Goulbourne posted the winning score of 6.73 seconds.
Lolo Jones defended her SEC title in the 55-meter hurdles with a NCAA automatic qualifying mark of 7.57 seconds. With her victory, Jones became the first athlete in LSU history to win back-to-back SEC Championships in the event.
Marian Burnett was the third Lady Tiger to defend her SEC Title. Burnett won her second championship in the 800-meter run with a time of 2:05.42. That marked her second-fastest time of the season.
Hazel-Ann Regis posted her first SEC Title with a 52.80-second 400-meter run, giving the Lady Tigers four individual titles in the meet.
Mallory McDonald, the LSU record holder in the weight throw, finished in fifth place with a throw of 64 feet, 10 inches.
The weight throw was dominated by Florida, and McDonald was the only athlete not from Florida to score points in the event.
The men’s team posted two first-place finishes.
Daniel Trosclair finished in first place in the pole vault, winning his first SEC Title with a vault of 17-06 1/2, and John Moffitt won the SEC Title in the long jump with a mark of 26-6 1/4. Moffitt also placed third in the triple jump recording a leap of 51-11.
Jeffrey Fisher broke a 14-year-old school record when he recorded a time of 1:49.18 in the 800, good for sixth place in the meet. The previous record, held by Mark Fowler, was 1:49.31.
The men’s 4×400 relay team finished second to South Carolina. The Tigers held a small lead heading into the anchor-leg, but the Gamecocks overtook them in the final 10 meters. The Tigers finished with a time of 3:07.22 while the Gamecocks won the title with a time of 3:07.09.
“I feel this was the semifinals, and the final test comes [at the NCAA Championships],” Henry said.
The LSU track and field teams compete for the NCAA Indoor Championships March 14-15 in Fayetteville, Ark. The women will attempt to defend their title in the indoor, and the men will attempt to keep a title streak of their own alive after winning the 2002 outdoor national championship.