April 8, 2010
NORMAL, Ill. -
A small, but very talented group of Illinois State track and field athletes will have a chance to compete against some of the best athletes in the country this weekend, when they travel to Knoxville, Tenn., to take part in the 44th-annual Sea Ray Relays on the newly-refurbished surface at Tom Black Track at LaPorte Stadium.
Athletes must achieve minimum performance standards to compete in the meet, which will feature several teams from the highly-competitive Southeastern Conference (SEC) including the host Tennessee Volunteers. The Redbirds will also see some familiar faces at the meet as well, with Missouri Valley Conference rival Indiana State scheduled to bring a contingent to the meet over the weekend.
"If you just go up against the SEC alone, which the majority of the teams competing in this meet are from, you know the competition is going to be fierce," head coach Elvis Forde said. "I looked at the some of the national best lists and our athletes will have a big challenge in front of them this weekend with several performers from those lists competing in the meet. Our team will primarily consist of our middle-distance runners, our jumper and our throwers which are area we have competed well in so far this fall. "
Most of the Redbirds will take to the track on Friday, beginning with the men's discus throw at 11:15 a.m. CT and concluding with the men's 10,000-meter run at 7:30 p.m. On Thursday, however, the ISU throwers Brittany Smith and Tori Ziegler will be represent the team in the hammer throw, which is slated to begin at 6 p.m., after the conclusion of the men's decathlon and women's heptathlon. The final day action on Saturday is set to begin at 7:45 a.m. with the men's hammer throw and will wrap up at 4:45 p.m. with the men's 4x400-meter relay.
"There will be several people to watch out for this weekend," Forde said. "Scott Krapf has run extremely well and will be competing in the 5,000-meters against a strong field. I'm also interested to watch the progression of our women's throwers, including Brittany, who is having a great spring as a freshman, and Tori, who has stepped up her game and is always right with Brittany. Lastly, Tim Glover will have his biggest challenge to date and will probably need to improve on his school-record throw of 226'06" earlier this season to have a chance to win."
Last weekend at the EIU Big Blue Classic, the Redbirds won 15 events over the two-day meet in Charleston, Ill. Smith was the standout for ISU, as she recorded first-place efforts in the shot put, hammer throw and discus. Her marks in the shot put and discus currently rank her second in the conference behind Southern Illinois' Jeneva McCall. The Redbirds also swept events over the weekend, as Leigh Petranoff and Glover each earned wins in the javelin and Amanda Albrecht and Drew Holl bested the competition in the high jump.
"This weekend will give them a good test and help them gauge where they are at this point in the season," Forde said. "We had a lot of success last weekend, but not against the caliber of talent we will face this weekend. Hopefully, we will return with some positive performances in terms of setting personal bests and moving up on the conference and national best-lists."
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