BATON ROUGE – Georgia’s Spec Towns Track will serve as the host site for the nation’s most competitive conference championship this weekend as the Tigers and Lady Tigers travel to Athens to kick off the postseason at the 2011 SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships beginning Thursday.
Senior NCAA champion Walter Henning will open the meet for LSU as he looks to defend his league title in the men’s hammer throw on Thursday beginning at 9 a.m. CDT.
The four-day meet will continue Friday and Saturday before this year’s SEC Outdoor team champions are crowned in an awards ceremony following Sunday’s championship finale at approximately 4:50 p.m.
Live results from the 2011 SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships will be provided by Flash Results and can be found online at www.flashresults.com. Fans can also follow up-to-the-minute and behind-the-scenes coverage of the Tigers and Lady Tigers during the meet by following @LSUTrackField on Twitter and becoming a fan of the official LSU Track & Field page on Facebook.
ESPN3.com will feature a live video stream of the SEC Championships on Saturday from 3-5:30 p.m. and on Sunday from 1-5 p.m. CDT. ESPNU will also air a two-hour tape-delay broadcast of the championship as part of the network’s coverage of the SEC on Wednesday, May 25, beginning at 7 p.m.
The No. 1-ranked Lady Tigers have an opportunity to cement their dominance of the SEC by taking home a fourth team title in five seasons from the SEC Outdoor Championships as they look to defend the crown they won in Knoxville, Tenn., last spring. LSU also won the women’s team title in 2007 and 2008.
Not only that, but the Lady Tigers will have a chance to complete the season sweep of league titles for the first time since 2008 as they were crowned champions of the 2011 SEC Indoor Championships in March.
The No. 3-ranked Tigers have been on the cusp of taking an SEC title of their own in each of the last four seasons at the SEC Outdoor Championships as they have earned a trio of runner-up finishes in 2007, 2008 and 2010, as well as a third-place finish in 2009. The Tigers hope to snap a 21-year drought this weekend with their first SEC Outdoor Championships victory since the 1990 campaign.
As is the case each season, the SEC Championships will feature many of the premier programs for college track and field as six men’s teams and five women’s teams enter the weekend ranked among the top 25 in the latest U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association power ranking released Tuesday.
The Tigers will go up against defending SEC Outdoor champion and No. 2 Florida, No. 11 Arkansas, No. 14 Georgia, No. 22 Mississippi State and No. 24 Auburn in the battle for the men’s team championship.
The Lady Tigers will defend their team crown against the likes of No. 7 Arkansas, No. 13 Auburn, No. 18 Georgia and No. 21 Tennessee in the race for the women’s championship.
LSU has enjoyed tremendous success at the SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships over the year, as the Tigers have captured 22 outdoor conference titles in their history and the Lady Tigers have claimed 10 team titles all-time to rank No. 1 among all women’s programs in the Southeastern Conference.
LSU athletes are also among the league leaders each season as the Tigers have won more event titles than any other team in the history of the SEC Outdoor Championships The Tigers have won 235 individual titles and 34 relay titles for a total of 269 event wins in the history of the meet. The Lady Tigers have won 94 individual and 24 relay titles of their own for a total of 118 event wins at the SEC Outdoor meet.
Four athletes will have an opportunity to defend the SEC individual titles they won in Knoxville, Tenn., a season ago, led by Henning’s title defense in the men’s hammer throw.
Henning, the reigning NCAA champion, is the two-time defending SEC hammer throw champion after he took home the title as a sophomore in 2009 and as a junior in 2010. Henning’s winning throw of 237 feet, 3 inches a year ago finished more than 13 feet ahead of his nearest competitor in the conference final.
While Henning became an SEC champion for the second time outdoors with his victory last spring, junior Barrett Nugent captured his first career SEC Outdoor title with a dominating win in the 110-meter hurdles after running a time of 13.56 seconds in the final. Nugent actually snapped a 25-year drought with his win as he became the first LSU Tiger since Bernard Williams in 1985 to win the SEC title in the 110 hurdles.
Two Lady Tiger juniors will also look to defend the SEC individual championships they won last year, as Samia Stokes won the discus and Cassandra Tate won the 400-meter hurdles at the conference meet.
Stokes took home the discus title with a winning throw of 168-5 to become the first Lady Tiger thrower in 16 seasons to win the SEC discus crown since Danyel Mitchell in 1993 and 1994. Tate claimed the crown in the 400 hurdles with a winning time of 57.12 to win the race by nearly one second.
After competing at the SEC Outdoor Track & Field Championships this week, the Tigers and Lady Tigers will open up the NCAA Championships in two weeks with a trip to Indiana’s Billy Hayes Track in Bloomington to compete in the NCAA East Preliminary Rounds that are set to run May 26-28.