Miami track and field made a significant impact on the ACC with a remarkable weekend in Louisville at the ACC indoor championships. The men placed sixth and the women 12th, but throughout the ‘Canes shined bright.
Miami’s biggest mark came from their men’s 4×400 relay, who got Miami’s one and only gold medal of the weekend. The group made up of grad students Lance Ward and Solomon Strader, junior Ace Malone, and sophomore George Franks took first place in the event with a time of 3:06.59, just shy of their record mark they set in February and just above the current third-place time set in January.
In their biggest meet of the season, this group flourished on the biggest stage, and this wasn’t only in the 4×4; the team broke records individually as well. Strader made the most noise, shattering a 27-year-old record set by Davian Clark in 1998 with a time of 45.74 in the 400m prelims. He finished with silver with a time of 45.86 in the finals. Franks was also a part of more history this weekend as he dominated the 200m race, breaking Miami’s record twice in one weekend. In the preliminaries he ran a time of 20.82, good for the record, and then in the finals got silver, cutting his time down to 20.77. Between Strader, Franks, and the 4×4 team, it was a great weekend for the men’s sprinters.
The women, though not taking first, also had a big race. The group of juniors Gabriella Grissom and Sanaa Hebron, as well as freshmen Lyonna Codd and Janay Moorer, came in third with a time of 3:33.39. Grissom made more history of her own later, breaking her own record in the 800m as she came in 4th place. She brought her time down by two seconds to a time of 2:01.60. Hebron later in her individual 400m scored a new personal best with a time of 52.88.
It was an exciting weekend for 800m runner Josh Jones, who narrowly won his heat by .004 seconds to squeak into the 800m finals. There he rounded out the track’s impressive performances by claiming the fifth fastest time at 1:49.39 to take fifth place in the 800m. As for other distance runners, Cormac O’Brien and Austen Cannon continue to swap top spots in their respective events. O’Brien, with a time of 8:15.42, was able to take down Cannon’s record set in 2023. Elsewhere, the do-it-all junior Edgar Campre got silver in the heptathlon with 5777, just shy of his record.
Looking at the field events, there were a few other impressive showings. Grad student Christina Warren placed second in the triple jump, setting a new PB at 13.07 and taking the fifth highest mark in Miami history. Senior Erikka Hill in the shot put set a new PB
at 16.67 to grab a bronze in the events and improve on her fifth-best mark in Miami’s record books.
Though this would be a perfectly fine peak for the season, there’s one more test for Miami. The NCAA indoor national championships will run from March 14 to 15. Last year Miami’s sole national champion was triple jumper Russell Robinson. With several ‘Canes taking top spots in the ACC, you can expect that Miami will have plenty of representation in Virginia Beach in just over a week.