Gamecocks notch four wins at Gamecock Indoor Open
Walking into the fieldhouse on Wednesday for the South Carolina Indoor Meet, one probably saw some new faces and noticed a few familiar ones missing.
With a number of team members resting up for this weekend’s Texas A&M Challenge, several Gamecocks got the chance to showcase their talents. For many young team members who won’t make the trip, Wednesday was a chance to display their abilities.
“And that’s the real reason: to get some [team members] experience who are trying to earn opportunities to travel, and a home meet, low-key, gives them that,” coach Curtis Frye said.
Carolina, which had never had a midweek meet before, gave some schools the chance to take on some top tier competition. The Gamecocks faced off against the likes of Bethune-Cookman, Benedict, South Carolina State and Charleston Southern, which garnished a much different atmosphere than usual.
“This is a first-year experiment for us because we’ve never had a midweek meet,” Frye said. “It’s something that the local schools wanted to have, so we were glad to accommodate some of them.”
With team members like All-Americans Antonio Sales and Lincoln Carr playing the role of spectators, a few Gamecocks did their best to fill their roles.
A number of competitors had their best outings of the season. Sophomore Ceci Kryst tied for second in the high jump with a jump of 1.45 meters, sophomore Alex Bermudez finished first with a time of 2:03:78 in the 800-meter and redshirt freshman Tylar Mangan and junior Tamra Stanish both posted jumps of 3.05 meters in the pole vault.
Frye is interested in his traveling squad preparing for the weekend meet but focused on getting experience for other members and giving schools that can’t travel very frequently a chance to compete.
“Some of the schools have a hard time traveling, and the large schools many times don’t let smaller division one schools in their competition,” Frye said. “We like to cooperate with our sister schools and give an opportunity to kids. At the same time, we gain experience. It’s a win-win.”