Clemson Travels to Blacksburg for ACC Indoor Track & Field Championships

Feb. 24, 2010

CLEMSON, SC – The Clemson track & field program will travel to Blacksburg, VA to compete at the ACC Indoor Championships on Thursday through Saturday. The meet will be held at Rector Field House on the Virginia Tech campus, the same site as the 2009 ACC Indoor Championships. The meet will begin Thursday with the multi-event competitions. Friday coverage will be streamed live via TheACC.com at 3 PM and Saturday at 12 PM. Coverage will conclude after the final event each day.

Clemson will be seeking its 13th ACC indoor team championship in men’s track & field. The Tigers last won the men’s team crown in 2002 under the late Bob Pollock. The women’s team, ranked No. 7 in the latest national rankings by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, is looking for the second ACC indoor championship in program history. The women won in 1992 under the direction of Wayne Coffman, now an athletic academic advisor at Clemson.

This is Clemson’s strongest women’s track & field team in recent memory. For the second straight year, the Tigers are led by a trio of field event standouts in Patricia Mamona, April Sinkler and Liane Weber. The three accounted for 68 percent of Clemson’s scoring output a year ago at the ACC indoor meet. Sinkler is defending champion in the high jump and long jump, while Weber has won two of the last three pentathlon crowns in the ACC.

The women’s team boasts one automatic NCAA qualifier and 13 provisionals so far this season. Twelve student-athletes rank among the top three in the conference in nine different individual events, while the 4x400m relay team is also tops in the league as well. Freshmen have been largely responsible for Clemson’s rapid improvement. Brianna Rollins (Miami, FL) has qualified provisionally in the 60 hurdles and 200m dash, while Stormy Kendrick has also qualified in the 60 dash and 200.

Also ranked atop the ACC charts on the women’s side is sophomore Kim Ruck. She nearly auto qualified in the 5K earlier this month at the Tyson Invitational. Ruck will be in search of Clemson’s first distance event championship for a female since Mareike Ressing won the 3K in 1993.

The men’s team has produced five NCAA provisional qualifiers. Miller Moss and Zach Berg are two of the qualifiers, and both have established Clemson indoor records this season. Moss broke the heptathlon record by totaling 5,653 points in winning the Clemson Games in late January. He is searching for his first-ever all-conference accolade indoors. Berg, a former All-ACC competitor in the weight throw, broke the Clemson record twice this season. He threw 66’11.5″ at the Virginia Tech Elite Meet earlier this month.

Spencer Adams and Charlton Rolle have both qualified provisionally for NCAAs in the 60 hurdles. Adams, a safety for the football team, is ranked amongst the best in the ACC with a season-best time of 7.86. Rolle, a transfer from the University of Tennessee, clocked a 7.90 earlier this year.

Xavier Tromp should also have a good shot at claiming an individual championship for the men’s team this weekend. The French exchange student has cleared 17’7.75″ in the pole vault, second-best in Clemson history.