BATON ROUGE — LSU track and field athletes on the verge of NCAA automatic qualifying standards will have one final opportunity to join next week’s NCAA Championships field as LSU hosts the Last Chance Meet Friday evening at the Carl Maddox Fieldhouse.
Field events will begin at 3:30 p.m. and track events will follow at 6:30 p.m.
Nine teams from throughout the South will be on hand as in-state schools, Louisiana Tech, Northwestern State, SE Louisiana and Tulane, as well as Alabama- Birmingham, Houston, Sam Houston State, Southwest Texas are all scheduled to compete.
While the top-ranked Lady Tigers and the fourth-ranked Tigers already have a combined 16 NCAA automatic qualifying marks in the books, there are an additional seven athletes with provisional marks that could join them this weekend.
Lolo Jones, the defending NCAA champion in the 60-meter hurdles, will be looking for her second straight bid to the national meet in the 60-meter dash.
Hurdlers RaNysha LeBlanc and Brittany Littlejohn have each posted provisional times of 8.29 and 8.30, respectively, in the 60 hurdles will be shooting for the automatic standard of 8.15.
Thrower Katie McKeever also looks to improve upon her season best effort of 50-0 3/4 in the shot put in hopes of advancing to the national meet.
In addition to the LSU Last Chance Meet, the Tigers will send three athletes to the Iowa State Last Chance Meet in Ames Saturday.
Tigers Robert Parham and Jeffrey Fisher will look to advance in the 200 and 800 meters, respectively, while Lady Tiger All-American Nadia Davy aims for an automatic mark in the 400 meters.
Next up, the LSU track and field team will travel to Fayetteville, Ark., next Friday and Saturday for the NCAA Indoor Championships at the Randal Tyson Track Center. The Lady Tigers enter the meet as the two-time defending NCAA champions, while the Tigers finished third a year ago.