BATON ROUGE — The LSU men’s and women’s track and field teams are set to open the outdoor season in full force this weekend as they host the LSU Tiger Relays at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium on Friday and Saturday.
The two-day meet will feature a total of 21 collegiate teams and 68 high school programs as Friday’s action begins with the college hammer throw at noon followed by the afternoon’s first running events at 3 p.m. with the collegiate 4×100-meter relays. The meet will resume Saturday with the field events at 11 a.m. followed by the first running events at 1:30 p.m.
“This is a great opportunity for us to go out and get something done early in the outdoor season,” said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. “It’s going to be a lot of fun because it’s a relays format and we are able to prepare ourselves for meets later in the season like the Texas Relays and the Penn Relays. It’s going to give everybody a chance to get on the track and compete early on.”
The Tiger Relays will serve as the outdoor season opener for the majority of athletes from the men’s and women’s teams as the squads are coming off of a pair of successful indoor campaigns that concluded two weeks ago at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Fayetteville, Ark.
The Lady Tigers open the outdoor season among the favorites to compete for their 25th national title in program history as they earned their best finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships since 2004 with a second-place performance. The Tigers wrapped up the indoor season among the top 10 teams in the nation by tying for 10th place at the national meet.
“We’re a little bit rested after the NCAA meet, and we’ve been doing a lot of teaching over the last couple of weeks to get the kids ready to go,” Shaver said. “At this particular meet, we’re just trying to get the athletes back on the track, get them focused and take a look at some exchanges and things like that as we move forward. It’ll be fun for us to get it kicked off here at home.”
Highlighting this weekend’s meet for LSU are a combined five athletes who earned individual All-America honors and a pair of Tigers who established new school records in their respective specialty events during the indoor season.
Senior Sherry Fletcher and junior Kelly Baptiste are slated to compete in the 100-meter dash, while junior Jessica Ohanaja and sophomore Nickiesha Wilson will run the 100-meter hurdles for the Lady Tigers. Junior Richard Thompson and senior Alleyne Lett will lead the men’s team by running the 100 meters and 110-meter hurdles, respectively, this weekend.
Baptiste was the team’s high scorer at the NCAA Indoor Championships as she finished third in the 60 and second in the 200, while Fletcher earned her first career individual All-America honor in the short sprint. Ohanaja, who is the reigning SEC champion in the 60-meter hurdles, was the national runner-up in her specialty event followed by Wilson in fifth place.
Lett was the Tigers’ top individual performer at the NCAA meet as he also finished second in the 60-meter hurdles by shattering the previous school record in the event with a time of 7.70 seconds in the event finals. Thompson set a school record of his own at the SEC Indoor Championships as he took second place in the 60-meter dash with a time of 6.64 in the final heat.
This weekend’s meet will also feature two of the nation’s premier 4×100-meter relay teams from a year ago as the foursome of Thompson, Xavier Carter, Marvin Stevenson and Kelly Willie won a national title for the Tigers and the team of Baptiste, Fletcher, Brooklynn Morris and Juanita Broaddus took second for the Lady Tigers at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.
Shaver has a deep talent pool from which to choose as Fletcher, Morris, Ohanaja and Baptiste will be the likely foursome that takes to the track in their season debut, while the men’s team will come from a group of Stevenson, Thompson, Will Coppage, Jeremy Hicks and Siraj Williams.
“Now is the time to do a little bit of experimenting with our relays and work on some exchanges and things like that,” Shaver said. “We return just about everybody on the women’s relay that was second at the NCAA meet last year, so we should be good there. We’ll have to replace some key guys from the men’s relay last year, and it’s just going to be a slow building process for them.”
In the field events, sophomore Chad Radgowski and freshman Preston Chatham have already posted regional qualifying marks in the javelin with their performance at the Louisiana Classics this past weekend. The duo is set to compete on Saturday after Radgowski threw for a distance of 224 feet, 1 inch, while Chatham posted a throw of 217-8 in his collegiate debut a week ago.
The teams will continue their home schedule next weekend as they are set to host the LSU Combined Events from March 29-30 followed by the Tiger Classic on March 31. They will then travel to Austin, Texas, during the week of Spring Break to compete in the prestigious Texas Relays from April 4-6.