Everything You Need To Know About the 2023 UCF Knights Track and Field Team – Black and Gold Banneret

Last year, the UCF Knights’ Track and Field team proved it was more than just the Rayniah Jones Show as multiple long-lasting program records fell, the team took home not one, but two AAC titles, and even more athletes joined Jones in Tracktown, USA for the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championship.

Now, the Knights have just one opportunity to defend those AAC titles as they enter their final year in the conference.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Knights for their 2023 Indoor and Outdoor campaigns:

Indoor and Outdoor AAC Champions

For the first time since 2013, the Knights took home the conference championship in both the Indoor and Outdoor seasons, setting conference records in points along the way. It was the team’s 1st Outdoor AAC title and 2nd Indoor AAC title.

Over the course of the season, new school records were set in eight different events across the indoor and outdoor competitions.

Knights athletes made it back to the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships for the first time since 2017, while the NCAA Outdoor Championships had the most Knights athletes it’s had since 2014.

The USTFCCCA does not release rankings until after the season begins. Regardless of that, however, the Knights now have to defend their back-to-back indoor and outdoor conference titles in their final seasons in The American.

With many staple athletes from last season’s group returning, the Knights look like threats to repeat.

Dana Boone- 5th season

At the head of the reigning AAC Indoor and Outdoor Coaching Staff of the Year is 5th-year head coach Dana Boone. In her first four seasons, no UCF Track and Field team under her finished higher than 5th in a conference meet. Then, it all came together in 2022.

While this season will still return individual athletes that made deep runs in 2022, Coach Boone will have to plug a few holes in her relay teams.

Watch our preview video with Coach Boone here:

Rayniah Jones

Does she even need an introduction anymore?

Rayniah Jones took the UCF community by storm back in Spring 2021 and now she is back (with a new style) to try and qualify for her 4th and 5th NCAA Track and Field Championships.

In 2022, she qualified to go to Tracktown, USA for the 60-meter dash and 60-meter hurdles for the Indoor Season and in the 100-meter hurdles and as a member of the 4×100-meter relay team in the Outdoor season.

From a program history perspective, she set a new program 60-meter hurdles record last year and still holds the 100-meter hurdle record from back in 2021.

Latasha Smith

Sometimes, the timing just does not work out.

Despite setting new program records in both the Indoor and Outdoor 400-meter sprints and being a part of the 4×400-relay team that set a new program record, Boone said three different runners on the 4×400-relay team came down with illnesses before the NCAA East Preliminary. This development ended Smith’s Outdoor NCAA run before it started, leaving just her Indoor Championship appearance in the 400-meter sprint, where she finished 14th.

However, this is still the same Latasha Smith that did all those things back for another season.

Asherah Collins

Rayniah Jones was not the only one that made their 2nd NCAA Outdoor Championship last season. Asherah Collins once again qualified for the Triple Jump and improved from a 23rd-place finish in 2021 to a 17th-place finish in 2022.

“I’m looking forward to hopefully her having her breakout year, ‘cause she’s been kinda teetering on there, but I really feel like she can make that transition this year to becoming an elite jumper because she has all the tools necessary to do that,” Boone said.

Natalia Madison

The 2022 season was a renaissance for the UCF Track and Field Multis.

Contributing to that was Palm Beach Gardens native Natalia Madison, who enters her sophomore season already with the 3rd-best Heptathlon mark in program history under her belt.

She follows in the footsteps of what was probably the program’s biggest offseason loss.

Brittany Floyd

The 2010s decade had come and gone, but no UCF Track and Field Multi athlete was able to take down the program’s pentathlon and heptathlon records. Then, in 2022, in came a transfer from UAB.

Boone said Brittany Floyd raised the standard for the Multis.

Not only was she breaking the overall pentathlon and heptathlon records, her fellow Multis that she trained with, Madison and Holly Cassels, broke the program’s freshman heptathlon and pentathlon records respectively.

“She only had that one year, but boy did she make an impact,” Boone said.

Isabella Richardson