As the nation’s best prep vaulter, coming off an undefeated season in an event that almost defies that kind of perfection, Daven Murphree (Harmony, Big Sandy, Texas) had a raft of collegiate options. But he didn’t didn’t look very far. “Some kids like to stay close to home, some don’t,” says Stephen F. Austin assistant Ron McCown. “We got lucky with him.” That’s the type of “luck” SFA has quietly built a quality track program with, one that took a big step forward with the addition of Murphree, who went 17-8½ last season at Harmony, a school of 250 located about 90 minutes from SFA in East Texas. Not only is he staying close to home, Murphree isn’t even changing event coaches, as his tutor Jeff Erickson is a volunteer assistant at SFA. “I love it down here,” Murphree says after his first semester in Nacogdoches. “Coming from a smaller school as well, I really liked it. Jeff Erickson was down here, another really good coach, and I just enjoy SFA. I feel like I fit in well here.” He joins an impressive stable of jumpers, as teammates Colton Ross and Cameron Meyer finished 3-4 at the Southland Conference Championships last spring. “It’s amazing, Colton has jumped 18, Cameron is a great jumper,” says Murphree, who trained with the pair some last year when he was still in high school. “When we’re jumping together, we say it’s like horsepower. There is a lot of power in the building.” As for fitting in at SFA, Murphree meshes perfectly with a team built on small-school talent. “We thrive on smaller schools,” says McCown, a former SFA All- America decathlete from Robert Lee, Texas (with a population of 1049, smaller even than Big Sandy’s 1360). “Probably 80% of our team is Class 3A or smaller [schools of 1000 students or fewer]; they like the atmosphere here. He went to school an hour and a half from here. “And it’s a chance to jump in Division I. We’re a smaller school but we’re still Division I.” — Track and Field News
