COLUMBIA, S.C. — After navigating his way through football last fall, South Carolina's Nyck Harbor began getting the process of training for football to getting his body conditioned for the demands of track and field.
The results have been impressive as Harbor qualified for the NCAA Championships in the 100 meter and 200 meter run. Harbor and his Gamecock teammates will be in Eugene, Oregon next week chasing some major hardware. He will return to Hayward Field in late June for the U.S. Olympic Trials which he qualified for last week with a run of 20.20 seconds in the 200 meter ruin at the NCAA East Regional in Kentucky. He can still qualify for the 100 meter if he can post a time of 10,05 or better in next week's event in Eugene.
At some point, Harbor will be back in the football facility full-time as he gets ready for his sophomore season at wide receiver. He has been going in the football facility as much as he can working on his fundamentals with the pass catching machine that is the jugs machine. He has stayed engaged throughout spring by attending the meetings so once he is back in that sport, he will be much farther along than he was when he arrived on campus last summer.
South Carolina first year head track and field coach Tim Hall naturally wonders what Harbor would be doing if he had had a fall season on the track.
"Not saying that he needs to do track – let the record reflect," Hall said laughing and also ending any notion that he wants Harbor to give up his football dreams.
"But if he had a fall with track, he would be doing amazing things."
But the gifted phenom does have the ability to play both sports and with that means a demanding schedule each year of training for one sport and then shifting into a totally different training mode for another.
For Hall, his first priority is "to return him to football like I found him."