Monday, March 15, 2010

2010 Sophomore Indoor Season

Booker closed out his sophomore indoor season with a bang after a sluggish seasonal start. He took the first part of his season to work on trying to improve his start and early on from meet to meet it was hit or miss for him. However by the weekend of the Gamecocks indoor Invitational meet he had started to see the fruits of his labor paying off. It all finally came together at the SEC Indoor T&F Championship where he narrowly missed 1st place by .03, behind LSU's Barrett Nugent 7.65, after hitting hurdle 4. However that meet produced two personal best ever times for him in the form of a 7.71 in the prelims and a 7.68 in the finals automatically qualifying him for the NCAA Indoor T&F Championship meet.

After his coaches rested him for a week he was then ready to make his first indoor appearance at a NCAA Indoor Championship. His preliminary run time was 7.69 giving him a 3rd place finish in his heat behind Oklahoma's Ronnie Ash and Nebraska's Lehann Fourie, however it was the 6th fastest time overall in prelims securing his spot in the finals. In the finals Booker who has struggled with setting in the blocks was out. The start was still a bit sluggish but it is his strong finish that he relied upon to go after the 1st place spot. Barely missing first place behind Ronnie Ash Booker happily and graciously accepted his silver medal knowing that he had closed out his season victoriously with another big PR of 7.58 which was .02 off Ronnie's winning time of 7.56!

Besides Ronnie Ash 1st place and Booker's 2nd place finish 2 more former North Carolina high School graduates were in that finals. Johnny Dutch from South Carolina University who finished 6th and Spencer Adams of Clemson University who finished 8th. Ronnie, Booker and Johnny actually all came from the same Greater Neuse River Conference. Congratulations goes out to all 4 of these finalist for yet another successful indoor season!

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