South Carolina Track and Field: Harbor and a Collegiate Record

Most South Carolina Gamecock fans recognized this weekend as a big one because of two huge wins for the Gamecocks on the hardwood. The South Carolina basketball team ended their eight-game losing streak in a road win over Ole Miss, and the still #1 women’s basketball team continued their dominance in a shellacking of third-ranked LSU.

However, this weekend was also notable because of South Carolina’s track and field program. Incoming freshman football player and track star Nyckoles Harbor raced in the Millborn Games in New York City against some of the fastest sprinters in the world. The seventeen year-old phenom finished seventh in the 60-meter dash, even though he was competing against world-class, professional adult sprinters, such as world record holder Christian Coleman. Measuring 6’5″ and 230 pounds, Harbor is not built like a typical sprinter, but he has all the tools to pursue his football and Olympic dreams as he competes in both sports at the University of South Carolina. While it might be difficult to discern whether football Head Coach Shane Beamer or track and field Head Coach Curtis Frye is more excited about adding Harbor to their team, there is no difficulty for the Gamecock faithful in imagining the possibilities.

Switching gears from sprinting to long-distance running, South Carolina sophomore runner Anass Essayi posted the second-fastest mile in collegiate track and field history over the weekend. Finishing his mile in 3:50:46 (3 minutes, 50 seconds, and 46 hundredths of a second), Essayi broke the South Carolina record and was one one-hundredth of a second away from beating every runner competing in the one-mile event on Friday, a field that included both collegiate and professional runners.

Coach Curtis Frye certainly has a great future to look forward to as the country’s best long-distance runner and the nation’s best young sprinter are both Gamecocks.