NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- Tennessee State senior and track and field student-athlete Royce Dates will represent the Flying Tigers in New Mexico at the 2014 NCAA Division I Men's and Women's Indoor Track and Field Championships this Friday.
“I would have hated my senior Indoor season to end at the conference championship,” Dates said. “I have been working hard all year to make it to NCAA’s and my coaches always told me to ‘train for the plane’”.
Dates will participate in the Long Jump after his leap of 7.71 meters in the OVC Indoor Championship set a new personal-record and placed him 14th nationally.
“My initial reaction was that I still have more work to do. I realized that I made some small mistakes with my jumps at the OVC Championship, and I have been correcting them in practice,” Dates said.
With his invitation, Dates became the first male athlete to make it to the NCAA Indoor Championship from Tennessee State.
“Being the first makes me feel really good considering the history of TSU track and field,” Dates said. “I guess I could say that I put my name in the history book already, but I have to go finish and compete at my best to truly earn it.”
Dates is the fourth-best jumper in the South Region while teammate Tyler Anderson is ranked seventh. Tigerbelle Amber Hughes, meanwhile, is pegged fourth in the female 60-meter hurdles.
The NCAA Indoor Long Jump will take place on Friday, March 14 at 6 p.m.
COURTESY TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY SPORTS INFORMATION
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