BATON ROUGE — LSU’s national champion track and field team opens it’s outdoor home schedule this weekend when it welcomes 41 teams from though out the country to Bernie Moore Track Stadium for the LSU Tiger Relays.
The two-day meet will run Friday through Saturday, with action in the field events beginning at 3 p.m. on Friday and noon on Saturday. Running events will follow on both days at 4:30 p.m. and noon, respectively.
Top teams slated to compete include Houston, Ole Miss, Illinois and Japan’s national sprint team. In-state competitors include Louisiana Tech, McNeese State, New Orleans, Northwestern State, Southeastern, Southern, Tulane, UL-Lafayette, UL-Monroe and Xavier.
LSU will be competing the majority of its athletes for the first time since its sweep of the NCAA Indoor national titles two weeks ago.
“Just because we ran fast indoors, doesn’t mean we can get the stick around outdoors,” said LSU head coach Pat Henry. “We’ll be starting from scratch and building towards the end of the season.
“Because we are competing outdoors we are adding a lot of events and people will be doing things they haven’t done yet this season.”
The Tiger Relays will see the season debut of LSU’s national champion men’s and women’s 4×100-meter relay teams, as well as All-American Lolo Jones in the 100-meter hurdles.
In the field events, many will be taking their first attempts in the discus, javelin and hammer throws, including school record holder Mallory McDonald who is slated to compete in both the hammer and the discus.
“This is the first week of a very competitive five week span for us,” said Henry. “Right now every meet is very important.”
Following the Tiger Relays, LSU will compete in a string of prestigious competitions that includes the highly competitive Texas Relays, the Miami Invitational, the LSU Alumni Gold and the Penn Relays in consecutive weeks.