After a short break following the end of the indoor season, Vandal track and field is rested and ready to start the outdoor season at the Buc Scoring Invitational Saturday in Spokane.
The Buc Scoring Invitational, hosted by Whitworth, scores the top five athletes in each event. Some of the other teams expected to join the Vandals and Pirates include Northwest Nazarene and Spokane Community College, among others. Even though the Buc Scoring Invitational is a scored meet, the Vandals are treating this meet the same way they took the indoor opener — as a springboard for the rest of the season.
“It’s kind of like the first meet indoors where we’re just trying to get the rust off a little bit and get back to competing,” Idaho Director of Track and Field Wayne Phipps said. “That’s really our goal and our focus on this first one — getting one under our belt and going from there.”
Idaho begins the outdoor season on a high note after the Vandal men won the WAC Indoor Championships and the women placed second in February. Both will attempt to carry that success into the outdoor season.
“(Winning the WAC) did give the team a lot more confidence, that ‘yeah, we can do this, we can put up good marks, we can do what we need to do be successful for winning outdoors,'” senior Rendel Jones said.
Some athletes are still nursing injuries from the indoor season but overall, the team is ready for the outdoor season to begin, Phipps said. Besides sophomore Hannah Kiser and senior Jeremy Klas who competed at nationals, the team has had two weeks to rest up for the start of the outdoor season. A few athletes have not been able to compete since the last outdoor season. One group Phipps is excited to see is the javelin throwers.
“It’s always neat to see our javelin guys and girls,” Phipps said. “They’ve been practicing so hard for so long with no real opportunity to compete so I’m excited to watch and see those people compete.”
Many changes come with the outdoor track and field season. Besides competing outdoors, the track size is larger, 400-meters instead of 200-meters, and new events, such as javelin and the 4×100-meter relay are held only in the outdoor season. Also, events such as the hurdles increase in distance. The Vandals also have the challenge of facing weather in addition to competing against the opposing teams — a factor the team didn’t have to worry about when competing indoors.
Of all the changes, sophomore distance runner Emily Paradis doesn’t think the bad weather will affect the Vandals as much as it may affect other teams.
“I don’t mind racing in poor weather,” Paradis said. “Unlike a lot of people, we are used to actually training in it so it doesn’t affect us as much.”
Stephen Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]