Fayetteville, Ark. – LSU’s JuVaughn Harrison led the charge for the Tigers in the field events on day two of the 2021 SEC Indoor Championships on Friday, while Tyra Gittens of Texas A&M was the highlight on the women’s side.
Harrison Leads LSU In The Field
Harrison captured the men’s long jump and high jump titles with a pair of quality performances.
The Tigers senior secured the long jump gold medal with a meeting record and personal best performance of 8.33m (27′ 4″). His winning effort came in the first round. He also had two other jumps over the 8-meter mark – leaping 8.18m in the third round and 8.14m in round four.
Carey McLeod of Tennessee finished second with an effort of 8.25m (PB) with Arkansas’s Ryan Brown also jumping a lifetime best of 8.12m for third. Matthew Boling of Georgia stretched out to a new personal best of 8.07m for fourth place.
Meanwhile, Harrison cleared 2.20m (7′ 2.50″) for the gold medal in the high jump.
Dontavious Hill of Auburn won the silver medal with a mark of 2.13m and Ole Miss jumper Allen Gordon grabbed the bronze with 2.08m and shared the honor with Mason Corbin of Texas A&M and Jackson Marseille of South Carolina who also cleared the same height.
Gittens Bounced Back To Land Double
On the women’s side, Tyra Gittens highlighted day two of the SEC Indoor Championships with a double after she claimed the high jump and long jump titles at the Randal Tyson Center.
The Texas A&M junior leaped a new personal best mark of 6.62m for first place in the long jump, after the Trinidad and Tobago multi-athlete star cleared 1.89m to captured the high jump title earlier in the day.
Friday’s performance brought back the joy for Gittens after her disappointing sixth-placed finishing performance in the pentathlon on day one.
“Tyra is a great athlete and I don’t know of a single great athlete that hasn’t had a bad day every once in a while, or have a bad moment because she definitely didn’t have a bad day yesterday,” said Texas A&M head coach Pat Henry. “She had a couple things go wrong in a couple of her events, she’s a multi-event athlete and she had a couple of events that she would like to of done over again.
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“She has a pretty good thought process and she is able to understand what it takes for her to change some things internally and to make her day better, she made a turnaround today and it was evident.”
Gittens added: “Today was about beating myself because yesterday I let the negative Tyra, the bad Tyra that we don’t like to see, I let her overtake and I let her win yesterday. Today I relaxed, I let go and everything that I wanted to do was executed and I can not be happier, I’m so proud of myself.”
Chris is a retired coach with many years of experience following track and field. Enjoys traveling with his wife, two children and grand kids.
