• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Director of Track & Field • Caryl Smith Gilbert Caryl Smith Gilbert is the USC Director of Track & Field which also means see overseas the development and running of the Trojans’ cross country program. She has placed the day to day operation of the sport in the capable hands of assistant coach David Freeman. It didn’t take long for Caryl Smith Gilbert to prove that USC had “hit a home run” when they named her as the Director of Track & Field on June 17, 2013. In her first three seasons at the helm of the Trojan program, USC has won three MPSF Indoor team titles, finished in the top two in the conference three times on the women’s side and two times on the men’s side and finished in the top 10 in the country twice for both the men and the women, with the men’s team posting two top five finishes in three seasons. Also, USC has had four individual event champions and averaged 20 first-team All-Americans per season. In addition, the cross country team posted its first team win since 2012 during the 2014 season, and making it more special was that it came against crosstown rival UCLA. In the classroom 41 athletes have been named to a Pac-12 All-Academic team and in 2016, Jaide Stepter was named the conference’s T&F Women’s Student-Athlete of the Year and Diego Lopez was granted a postgraduate scholarship. In her first season leading the Trojan program, she guided the men’s team to a fourth-place tie and the women’s team to a 16th-place tie at the NCAAs, the women’s team won the MPSF Indoor Championship and both men’s and women’s teams placed second at the Pac-12 Championships. Also, USC garnered 19 first-team outdoor All-America honors, posted 22 all-time top 10 school marks and Aleec Harris set the school hurdles record. It is no surprise then that she was named the NCAA West Region Women’s Head Coach of the Year and the MPSF (Indoor) Women’s Head Coach of the Year. Smith Gilbert’s student-athletes also excelled in the classroom where they earned 13 Pac-12 All-Academic selections and Al- exandra Collatz was honored as a third-team Academic All-American. She proved to be just getting started as in 2015 the men’s team placed fifth at the NCAA Championships with its fifth- most points since the scoring system changed in 1985 and the women’s team placed seventh with its most points since 2006. The top 10 finishes by both programs were USC’s first since the 2009 season. The men’s team had three individual champions with Conor McCullough winning the hammer throw and Andre De Grasse taking both the 100m and 200m titles. He became the first college male athlete to claim both titles in the same season since Walter Dix in 2007 and Smith Gilbert became the first woman to coach a men’s 100m and 200m champion. The women’s team earned 14 first-team All- Americans, the second-highest for any school, and the teams combined for 24 outdoor first or second team All-American selections. Again the men’s and women’s teams took second at the Pac-12 Championships and Smith Gilbert was named both men’s and women’s Pac-12 Coach of the Year, becoming the first woman to be named the conference’s men’s coach of the year. She again led the women’s team to the MPSF Indoor title and the men’s team placed second in their first season in the conference. Smith Gilbert was named the 2015 USTFCCCA West Region Women’s Indoor Coach of the Year and the MPSF Women’s Indoor Coach of the Year. Last season, the women’s team placed second at the conference meet and tied for ninth nationally, while the injury-plagued men’s team took fifth at the Pac-12 meet and then finished 12th at the NCAA Championships. The men’s team also won the MPSF Indoor title. Amalie Iuel was named the Pac-12 Women’s Field Athlete of the Year after winning her second conference heptathlon title. Prior to her arrival at USC, Smith Gilbert was a six-time Conference USA Coach of the Year at the University of Central Florida who guided the Knights’ women’s team to a program-best fifth place finish at both the 2013 NCAA Track and Field Outdoor and Indoor Championships.. 2016 USC Cross Country Roster Runner Height Birthdate Class Hometown Chloe Berry 5-3 7/23/98 Freshman Mission Viejo, Calif. Rebekah Ent 5-8 1/20/95 Junior* Moraga, Calif. Rachel Glynn 5-8 3/31/97 Sophomore Aurora, Ontario, Canada Amber Gore 5-5 1/21/97 Sophomore Redondo Beach, Calif. Vivian Grimes 5-9 2/2/94 Senior* Naples, Fla. Lorea Ibarzabal 5-7 11/7/94 Senior* Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain Lauren Maurer 5-6 1/17/97 Sophomore Fullerton, Calif. Sophia Racette 5-5 9/27/96 Sophomore St. Louis, Mo. Madison Ricks 6-0 10/20/96 Sophomore* San Ramon, Calif. Mikaela Smith 5-7 7/4/97 Sophomore Fresno, Calif. Kamryn Weber 5-6 11/8/97 Freshman Frisco, Texas The Coach • David Freeman David Freeman begins his fourth season as the coach of the USC cross country team and as an assistant coach in charge of the distance runners for the track and field team. USC had solid runs from Katerina Berdousi, Rebekah Ent and Jenna Tong at the 2015 West Regional, but did not enter enough athletes to figure in the team scoring. It was another solid season as USC introduced freshmen like Rachel Glynn, Amber Gore, Lauren Maurer and Mikaela Smith and newcomer Ent into the mix, while managing to tie for second at the UNLV Invitational and finish first among Division I school at the UC Irvine Invitational. Freeman began to lay down the foundation for the future in 2014 bringing in his first freshman class to join veterans Berdousi, Erica Capellino, Kira Soderstrom and Tong. The Trojans placed 11th at the Pac-12 Championships and 19th at the West Regional, USC’s highest finish at the regional since 2008. USC also defeated crosstown rival UCLA 27-28 in the Dual Meet, the first meet win for USC since the 2012 Aztec Invitational. Five different Trojans set 5K personal bests at the meet, including the winner Berdousi who ran 17:21.00, the sixth-fastest 5K time ever by a Trojan female. USC had some strong moments under his leadership in 2013, including Capellino and Tong finishing 1-2 at the first USC-UCLA Cross Country Dual Meet. Many of USC’s runners established PRs and Tong went on to run her best 6K race at the NCAA West Regional. Freeman spent the previous two seasons working at TCU where he was an assistant coach for track and cross country and served as the director of operations. Prior to that, Freeman was the head coach at Freedom High in Orlando, Fla. for one season and at Tates Creek High in Lexington, Ky. for two seasons. In 2001, Freeman was named the Area 6 Girl’s Track and Field Coach of the Year as he led the Commodores to a state runner-up finish in Class 3A. Freeman worked with the Florida track and field team for three seasons and at his alma mater Kentucky for one season. He had an accomplished track career at Kentucky, highlighted by a trip to the 2008 Beijing Olympics to compete in the 1500m race. He represented Puerto Rico and finished 10th in his heat and 24th overall. Freeman graduated from Kentucky in 2005 with a degree in business management and earned his masters in business education from UK in 2009. While competing at Kentucky, Freeman was a three-time indoor All-American in the 800m and mile run. He still holds the Kentucky school record in the indoor 800m. 1 2016 USC Women’s Cross Country Team Outlook by USC cross country coach David Freeman • Building Upon The Foundation Established Last Season • This might be the youngest team we have had since my arrival, but it is potentially the most talented top to bottom. We are building our cross country program. We are adding onto a foundation that we started last season and are growing and grow- ing. We mostly have freshmen and sophomores on the team and actually the only seniors we have are transfers Vivian Grimes and Lorea Ibarzabal. We are starting to develop some depth on the roster and I think that is going to help with practice, especially on the competition side to have quality workouts. I think the biggest benefi t is that we have more bodies out there to challenge each other than we have had previously. This year we are still a young team, but I think we are learning from our experiences last year, not only from cross country, but track season also. We are starting to learn what it takes to be great in the Pac-12 Conference and nationally, so we are going to take those lessons and really work hard throughout the semester and get ready for the Pac-12 Championships at the end of the semester, that is our goal. We want to keep improving, getting better day-by-day and be better by the end of the season, the championship part of the season. I think we lost a lot of experience with Kat (Berdousi) and Jenna (Tong) to name a few, but I think the young women who came in this year have the talent to contribute right away.

Load more

  20

Copy Link