University of Tennessee Athletics
Coleman, Hall Earn South Region Honors
June 04, 2017 | Track & Field
New Orleans, Louisiana - Tennessee junior sprinter Christian Coleman won the South Region Runner of the Year and assistant coach Tim Hall was named South Region Men's Assistant Coach of the Year as the USTFCCCA announced their regional awards on Sunday.
Coleman also earned the award during the indoor season. This year Coleman won the SEC Championship in both the 100m and 200m dashes. In doing so, the Atlanta native became the first collegian to ever run record wind-legal times under 10 seconds in the 100m and under 20 seconds in the 200m on the same day. His marks of 9.97 and 19.98 were the nation's best times when he recorded them. Coleman earned the 2017 SEC Commissioner's Trophy as the high point scorer at the SEC Championship.
This past weekend at the NCAA East Prelims, Coleman bettered both times. He posted a 100m mark of 9.96, the fastest wind-legal time in NCAA this year and the ninth-fastest in collegiate history. He followed that performance with a staggering mark of 19.85 in the 200m while running into a headwind. The 200m times is the second best in collegiate history and the best time recorded in the world this year. The 200m time allowed Coleman to move past Justin Gatlin for the Tennessee school and for second place in collegiate history. Gatlin ran a time of 19.86 at the 2002 SEC Championship.
Coleman is undefeated in all individual event finals in 2017 and owns the fifth-fastest 100m in the world this year. He also owns three of the 10 fastest 200m times in the world this year and is the only person who is on the list more than once. In the NCAA this year, there have only been five wind-legal times under 10 seconds recorded and Coleman has three of those. In the 200m, only three times has a student-athlete posted a wind-legal time under 20 seconds and Coleman has done it twice.
During the indoor season, Coleman was named USTFCCCA National Indoor Runner of the Year and South Region Runner of the Year. He has also earned five SEC Runner of the Week awards and two USTFCCCA National Athlete of the Week awards this year. This week, Coleman was named the SEC Outdoor Men's Track Athlete of the Year and the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame honored him as their Amateur Athlete of the Year.
Assistant Coach Tim Hall earned the award for the second consecutive year. Last year he was named the Men's Outdoor Assistant Coach of the Year and the Women's Indoor Assistant Coach of the Year. Hall is charged with working with the sprints group and the relay teams at Tennessee.
Hall has coached Coleman to some of the fastest times ever recorded by a collegian. He is also responsible for seven of the 14 Vols that are headed to Eugene for the NCAA Championship. Six of those are men as the Vols qualified both the 4x100m and 4x400m relays.
The 4x100m team posted the seventh-fastest time in school history with a mark of 38.92 at the NCAA East Prelims. The 4x400m team owns the fourth-fastest time in school history as they ran 3:03.65 at the Florida Relays earlier this year. That team qualified for the Championship as Nathan Strother ran the final leg in a split of 44.31 to move the team from fifth to second and earn an automatic qualifying spot.
Strother also qualified for the NCAA Championship in the 400m as he tied his own personal best with a time of 45.07. That mark is second in that distance in school history and ranks sixth in the NCAA this year.
