Nyck Harbor makes South Carolina track debut, continues to balance both sports
South Carolina freshman and former five-star athlete Nyckoles Harbor made his official debut on the track for the Gamecocks over the weekend as the viral star and Olympic hopeful continues to balance the demands of both football and track.
“Nyck’s been awesome,” South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer said Saturday. “He came to us and was like, ‘I want to be a track athlete. I want to help us win a championship in track, but I don’t want to miss out on anything football-wise.’ So he has been awesome. It’s not like he just goes to track, and then we see him every once in a while. He’s involved with football every day.”
On opening day of the Razorback Invitational on Friday night in Fayetteville, Ark., Harbor made his collegiate 200m debut with a time of 20.97 to finish fifth with the ninth best indoor 200m time in school history. Teammate Anthony Greenhow finished third overall in the event with a season-best time of 20.60, good for seventh in the NCAA standings.
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Beamer added that the staff has been cognizant of Harbor’s track responsibilties as they’ve mapped out his football schedule.
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“Now, we’re smart with his meets. He’s out in Arkansas. We didn’t have him here yesterday morning doing bear crawls and sled pushes as well, but he wants to be in the meetings,” he continued. “He wants to be around the football team. We had a 6 a.m. workout two Mondays ago that he didn’t have to be at because he wasn’t participating in it, but he came at 6 a.m. to be there for his teammates.”
Beamer expects a similar mix as the football team participates in spring practice later this semester.
“So I’ve sat down with the track coaches. We’ve got a great working relationship,” Beamer said. “He’s mixing both, but he’s still heavily involved with football. And then when we get into the spring, it’ll be similar. He’ll be limited in the spring; he wants to practice and be involved, but we’re just going to be smart about how we do it with track.”
