BATON ROUGE — Competition heats up for the LSU track and field team when it travels to New York City this Friday and Saturday for the sixth annual New Balance Collegiate Invitational at the Armory Track and Field Center.
Widely regarded as one of the best collegiate competitions of the indoor season, the New Balance meet will feature nearly 100 colleges and universities. Several of the nation’s top 20 teams will be present among the field, including Alabama, Arkansas, Baylor, BYU, Illinois, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Texas A&M.
Competition begins Friday at 10 a.m. and will conclude that evening at Madison Square Garden, where select event finals will be run as part of the prestigious Millrose Games. Saturday’s action gets underway at 7:15 a.m.
This meet will mark LSU’s first competition of the year that will crown both a men’s and women’s team champion. Both the Tigers and Lady Tigers have experience tremendous team success at this meet, as the women’s squad has won four straight team titles and the men’s team has recorded four consecutive top-five finishes, including the team championship in 2004.
Individually, LSU will have nearly all of its athletes competing in their specialty events.
On the women’s side, All-Americans Kelly Baptiste and Brooklynn Morris will be featured in both the 60 and 200-meter dashes.
Fellow All-Americans Deonna Lawrence and Jessica Ohanaja will take to the track in the 400 meters and the 60 hurdles, respectively.
In addition, Morris and Lawrence are two of the possible legs on the Lady Tigers’ 4×400-meter relay team.
Highlighting the track events for the men will be Olympic gold medalist Kelly Willie. He is scheduled to participate in both the 60 and 200-meter dashes.
Sophomore speedster Xavier Carter will also be on track, he will be running in the 400 meters, the first indoor open quarter of his career.
In the field, Lady Tiger jumpers Kathy Coleman and Tina Harris will look to improve on their provisional marks in the long jump and Shaunette Davidson will look to do the same in the high jump.
Ricky Jean-Francois and Rabun Fox highlight the field competition for the Tigers. They will be competing in the shot put and weight throw, respectively.
Following the New Balance Invitational, LSU finishes up a two-meet road swing with a trip to Fayetteville, Ark., for the Tyson Invitational, Feb. 10-11.