University of Georgia Athletics
One Coach, A Multitude Of Stars
March 10, 2016 | Track & Field
View Full Archive of the Frierson Files
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
The question was the same, presented three weeks apart to a pair of Georgia track and field multi-event stars: How is it that so many Bulldogs and Lady Bulldogs excel in events like the decathlon, heptathlon and pentathlon?
"It's Petros," said junior Kendell Williams, a three-time NCAA multi-event champion during her first two years at Georgia.
Williams said that back on Feb. 16, right after she participated in Georgia's Indoor Athletic Facility groundbreaking. Last week, senior Garrett Scantling, one of the top men's multi-event athletes in the country the past few years, was asked the same question. His answer may look familiar.
"Petros," he said last week, as Georgia's top performers prepared for this weekend's NCAA Indoor Championships, in Birmingham, Ala.
Petros Kyprianou is in his first season as the Georgia men's and women's track and field head coach, after serving as an assistant under Wayne Norton for seven years. He's one of the very best coaches in the country, as evidenced by his student-athletes winning four NCAA titles in 2015 and six SEC titles -- and that's just last season.
In the men's indoor heptathlon, Scantling is chasing hard after the national title. He has unfinished business in the event. A year ago, he got off to a slow start to put himself in a deep, 230-point hole, before mounting a massive rally. He wound up second, two points off the lead. In 2013, as a sophomore, he placed third.
Scantling owns the school record with 6,068 points and his top score so far this season, 6,020, is No. 1 among collegiate athletes and No. 2 among all U.S. athletes. Having already completed his outdoor season eligibility (he redshirted the indoor season in 2014), this is Scantling's final event for the Bulldogs.
"I'm just ready to go out there and redeem myself, because I was supposed to win last year," he said. "Things happened and I came up short. I'm just trying to finish really well. This is my last meet, my last shot at it."
But Scantling, who's the Energizer Bunny of the multi-event guys, and possibly the most charismatic student-athlete Georgia has, isn't the only Bulldog chasing a heptathlon title this weekend. In fact, Bulldogs have three of the top eight scores of the year.
Two-time defending NCAA decathlon champion Maicel Uibo has the fourth-best score (5,854) this season and fellow Bulldog (and fellow Estonian) Karl Saluri is ranked No. 8 with a score of 5,792. The top 16 scorers qualify for the NCAAs and for much of the season Georgia had four in that group, but Devon Williams, Kendell's older brother, wound up just six points short of the final spot in Birmingham.
Georgia has three of the 16 athletes competing in the heptathlon. No other program has more than one.
"It's Petros and recruiting," Scantling said. "When he recruited me we had three guys, counting myself: C.J. Holman, Michael Ayers and me. ... He had faith in me, that I would pick up this event. He brought in Maicel, which really helped me and pushed me, and he just kept coaching me and coaching me.
"It was just a chain reaction and everyone just started getting better and better and better."
To call it an embarrassment of riches would be to diminish it somehow. It is a wealth of talent and drive and execution, borne of a group of athletes' immense commitment and a coach that clearly knows how to guide them.
And it's not just the men that thrive in the multis. Kendell Williams, the two-time defending NCAA women's pentathlon champion (she also holds the NCAA record) and 2014 women's heptathlon champion, is ranked No. 2 in the country with a top score this season of 4,558, while graduate student Xenia Rahn is No. 10 (4,212).
A year ago it was Williams and then-teammate Quintunya Chapman pushing each other the way Scantling and Uibo do. In the multi-events, if you're the best on your team at Georgia, then you're among the very best in the country.
"It's Petros, it really, truly is," Williams said. "We all came here to work with him and we know that his training works and he has a plan for each of us.
"It's specially designed for each of us -- he thinks about the workouts, he's very educated in the sport and that is the reason why we all came here and that we stay here. It's definitely Petros."
Not only will Williams be competing in the pentathlon, she'll also be chasing national titles in the long jump and high jump. Senior Chanice Porter is also competing in the long jump and high jump, while sophomore Keturah Orji, the 2015 NCAA outdoor triple jump champion, will compete in the triple jump and long jump. Orji's triple jump of 14.08 meters is No. 1 in the nation.
The Georgia women also have junior Tatian Gusin and sophomore Mady Fagan competing in the high jump. Yes, Kyprianou is good with the jumpers as he is with with the multi-event athletes.
Saluri, a sophomore that redshirted last year due to injury, admits to not being a great jumper. At 5-foot-10, compared to the 6-3 Scantling and 6-2 Uibo, the high jump is more of a challenge for Saluri. He said he's better at the decathlon than the heptathlon because there are more events, ones in which he excels like the javelin, that give him a chance to make up for other deficiencies.
Still, he's No. 8 in the country.
"My goal for this season was 5,800 and I'm eight points shy of it right now," Saluri said. "Maybe [this] weekend."
Kyprianou can't just wave a wand or cast a spell and make you an All-American. You have to be very talented and incredibly dedicated. But if you put in the work and go all in to develop your talents, as Georgia's run of excellence the past few years in the multi-events shows, incredible things can happen.
"We trust in everything that he tells us, and it pays off," Scantling said, later adding, "He's a magician. He knows what he's doing and everything works."
That's incredibly high praise, but who would know better than Scantling? Or Williams, Uibo, Orji and the rest?
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
Players Mentioned
