BATON ROUGE — LSU’s track and field team will participate in one final meet before the SEC Championships, as the top-ranked Lady Tigers and the second-ranked Tigers travel to Philadelphia for the 110th running of the prestigious Penn Relays Carnival.
Top talent from around the country will descend on the University of Pennsylvania’s Franklin Field for the competition that runs Thursday through Saturday.
With the meet’s emphasis on relays and field events, LSU’s national championship squads should once again be a major factor in the competition.
After a phenomenal showing in 2003, the Lady Tigers return to the meet as the defending champions in the 4×100, 4×200, shuttle hurdle and sprint medley relays.
The Lady Tigers will shoot for their fourth straight title in the 4×200-meter relay, while also taking aim at their seventh 4×100 title in the last 10 years. The foursome of Hazelann Regis, Monique Hall, Nadia Davy and Muna Lee won the 4×200 crown at the Texas Relays earlier this month and Hall, Davy and Lee have joined with Lolo Jones to form the top- ranked 4×100 squad in the country.
The Lady Tigers also return a dominant quartet of hurdlers for the shuttle hurdle relay. Jones, RaNysha LeBlanc, Brittany Littlejohn and Tiffany Robinson will eye second straight title in the event after winning last year’s crown in near world record pace.
The Tiger relay teams should also be in the competitive mix as the 4×100 enters the meet as the top-ranked team in the country and the 4×400 sits at No. 4 this week.
National champions John Moffitt and LeJuan Simon will headline the Tiger crew in the field events. Each is ranked among the top-five nationally in both the long jump and triple jump.
Following the Penn Relays, the LSU track and field team will take two weeks off before traveling to Oxford, Miss., for the SEC Championships, May 13-16.