Gaither’s Lovely signs with St. John’s

Posted Jul 16, 2009 by Bill Ward

Updated Jul 16, 2009 at 02:17 PM

Gaither product Rikka Lovely, the only Hillsborough County female track and field athlete to earn three medals at the 2008 state championships, has signed a scholarship with St. John’s University.

“She has tremendous upside and I think in her first college race, you’ll see her run [the 100-meter dash] in 11.4 or 11.5 seconds,” said her personal coach, Steven Rivers. “She had a lot of personal distractions her senior year but once she gets into a collegiate atmosphere and can focus on the sport, you’re going to see her start reaching her potential.”

During her junior season at Gaither, Lovely qualified for the Class 4A state finals in four events and reached the medals podium in three of them—the long jump, triple jump and 100-meter dash. This year, Lovely made it to state in the 100 and missed advancing to the finals by just .05 seconds.

Lovely also received interest from South Florida, the University of Southern California, Lousiana State, Alabama State, Princeton and Murray State. She leaves Gaither holding school records in the triple jump (37 feet, 7.75 inches), 100 (12.10) and 200 (24.89). She has also run the 55 indoors in 7.49 and has a personal best in the long jump of 18.8.