THIS WEEK
The Illinois State track & field squad travels to Terre Haute, Ind., for the 21st-annual Coughlan-Malloy Cup against longtime Missouri Valley Conference rival Indiana State on Saturday, Jan. 17. The meet will begin at 2 p.m. CT inside the Sycamores' Indoor Track & Field Facility.
MEET INFORMATION AND HISTORY
The dual meet event, which is named after legendary coaches John Coughlan (Illinois State) and Bill Malloy (Indiana State), has taken place every year since 2005, except during the 2020-21 season. Coughlan spent 23 years coaching men's and women's track & field and cross country for the Redbirds. He has since been inducted into the MVC Hall of Fame and the Illinois State Athletics Percy Family Hall of Fame.
• Indiana State leads the all-time series in the meet, 14-6.
• Illinois State captured five straight Coughlan-Malloy Cups from 2018-23, but Indiana State has prevailed the last two seasons, including a 178-118 win in 2024, which marked the largest margin of victory in the event since 2015.
• The Coughlan-Malloy Cup is given to the winner of the combined men's and women's team scores at the meet. Two people per event per team may score.
SCOUTING INDIANA STATE
Indiana State posted a strong showing in its season-opening John Gartland Invitational on Dec. 13. The Sycamores won 12 different events and had four program top 10 marks set during the competition. Casey Hood Jr., Reneisha Andrews and Aliseonna Garnett are athletes to look out for this weekend, as they all earned conference accolades for their performances in the season opener. Per Indiana State Athletics, Andrews and Hood Jr. both rank in the top 10 nationally in the 60m. Hood Jr. also owns a top-15 national ranking in the 200m, while Garnett holds top-25 national rankings in both throws events.
LAST TIME OUT
Mattison Plummer was the lone competitor to represent the Redbirds in the first meet of the season, and she represented the program well. At the Sharon Colyear-Danville Opener in Boston on Dec. 6, Plummer ran a personal-record time of 16:45.06 in the 5000m, moving her into sixth all-time in program history.
HEAR FROM HEAD COACH JEFF BOVEE
On the importance of the Coughlan-Malloy Cup
"It's great to have this event on the schedule every year as one of our ways to kick off the season. I think it's great for the sport in general. It gives us a good litmus test of where we are really early on as a coaching staff and as a team, and because the meet has been going on for so long, a lot of other coaches in our conference and around the country look forward to seeing how it plays out. Unfortunately, in our sport there's not a lot of scored meets, but this meet gets back to the basics and back to the way the sport really started. The champion of this meet tends to be a good indicator of your potential to try and win a Missouri Valley team title later on."
On what the Redbirds hope to learn from the meet
"Just coming back from break, we certainly don't want to overextend our athletes right now. We want to have a great competition and put our best team out there but also walk away from it healthy and have something to build upon."
