Men roll to ACC title; Seymour sprints to history
Ka’Tia Seymour (center) successfully defended her 60- and 200-meter titles in lifetime bests at the ACC championship meet last weekend.
Photo special to the Outlook
By Bob Thomas
Seminoles.com
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – With one of the most dominant closing day performances in the program’s rich championship history, the ninth-ranked Florida State men won their 13th ACC Indoor Track & Field Championship last Saturday in an unexpected runaway.
Entering the final day with a one-point lead over Virginia and a five-point edge over pre-meet favorite Virginia Tech, the Seminoles dropped 40 points on the field after the first two events were scored and never looked back.
The Noles established post-expansion ACC indoor records for the most points (140) and margin of victory (31) as they overwhelmed the runner-up Hokies.
“I truly thought we had no chance to win the men’s title after Day 1,” FSU coach Bob Braman said. “But then we dropped the best Day 2 in my career, and that gave us belief.”
And the Noles ran with it.
With Trey Cunningham leading the stellar stable of hurdlers with an ACC record third consecutive title – breaking his own meet record (7.60) in the process – the Noles posted a 1-2-3-7 finish for 26 points in the first scored event of the day at the Loftus Sports Center.
“It was a pretty awesome,” said Cunningham, who was joined on the podium by runner-up Caleb Parker and third-place Braxton Canady. “I don’t think any other team can say that, except our long jumpers. It was a great start to the meet and catapulted the team to the title, I think.”
The meet wasn’t an hour old when the Noles’ shot put tandem of senior Sanjae Lawrence and sophomore Milton Ingraham finished 2-3 behind season and personal-bests for 14 more points, nearly tripling their projected point total.
Lawrence’s bomb of 18.60 meters (61-0.25) was more than a meter better than his previous best with the Noles and moved him to No. 6 on FSU’s all-time list. It came after Ingraham set the tone with his first-round throw of 18.02 (59-1.5), which ranks No. 7 all-time.
On the triple jump runway, Isaac Grimes and Jacore Irving added to the building blowing, with fourth- and seventh-place finishes, respectively.
“They kicked off the day and everyone fed off that energy,” Braman said. “Titles are so satisfying. Going from a 30-point underdog to a runaway champion is a truly rare accomplishment.”
The news trickled to the sprinters warming up across the street at the Joyce Center, and further fueled the teams’ final day fire.
While the men’s team was on its way to the title, junior Ka’Tia Seymour turned in the finest ACC Indoor Championship performance for a women’s sprinter in memory, successfully defending her 60- and 200-meter titles in lifetime bests. She won the 60-meter title in a facility record time of 7.17, moving into a share of No. 2 on the Noles’ all-time list.
And she wasn’t through. In the 200 final she broke her own FSU record, winning in 22.82 and breaking the ACC Championship and facility record set by Miami’s Shakima Wimbley in 2017. It also secured her double do-over at the NCAA Championships in two weeks. And as an encore Seymour anchored the 4×400 relay to a third place finish, locking up her record third consecutive ACC Championship Track MVP.
Not only is Seymour the first woman to win three ACC Indoor Championship Track MVP honors, she joins former FSU men’s star Maurice Mitchell (2010-2012) as just the second of either gender to accomplish the feat.
