BATON ROUGE – With the 2015 outdoor season now in full swing following their appearance at the 88th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays last weekend, the LSU Track & Field teams return home to play host to their first of three home meets this season with the fifth-annual Battle on the Bayou scheduled for Saturday at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium.
The Tigers and Lady Tigers host the Battle on the Bayou on Saturday, while they will also play host to the LSU Alumni Gold on April 18 and the LSU Invitational on May 2 to close the regular season.
The afternoon session at this year’s Battle on the Bayou event is set to begin at 12:30 p.m. CT following a brief opening ceremony with the event running through the 4×400-meter relays at approximately 3:45 p.m. The morning session is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. CT with the women’s javelin on the East runway and the men’s javelin on the West runway.
Admission is free to the Bernie Moore Track Stadium on Saturday as fans are invited to come out and cheer on the Tigers and Lady Tigers in their first home meet of the 2015 outdoor season. It will be “Kid’s Day” at the at the Battle on the Bayou with festivities beginning at noon CT. The first 100 kids through the gates at the Bernie Moore Track Stadium will receive an official gold medal from the team for their attendance, while it also brings a face painter, an inflatable bouncy house and games for kids to play outside the main entrance.
Unlike the first four seasons of the Battle on the Bayou event, this year’s event is a non-scored meet as LSU Track & Field looks forward to its home opener on Saturday. The Tigers and Lady Tigers had swept the men’s and women’s team titles in each of the last three seasons from 2012-14 following a pair of runner-up finishes in the inaugural meet during the 2015 outdoor season.
Saturday’s competition will also feature the likes of regional programs from Louisiana-Monroe, Mississippi Valley State, New Orleans, Nicholls State, Southeastern Louisiana, Southern-New Orleans and Tulane.
After wrapping up the 2014 outdoor season with a fourth-place team finish by the Tigers and a sixth-place finish by the Lady Tigers at the NCAA Division I Outdoor Track & Field Championships last June, LSU’s teams are ranked among the nation’s top teams once again as the Tigers are No. 4 and the Lady Tigers are No. 18 in the preseason rankings released by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
Two LSU athletes were honored as SEC Athletes of the Week following their performance at the 88th Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays last weekend as senior Rodney Brown was selected the SEC Men’s Field Athlete of the Week for the second week in a row and freshman Daeshon Gordon was honored as the SEC Women’s Freshman of the Week for the second time in 2015 on Tuesday.
Brown is the early-season NCAA leader in the men’s discus throw as he has won back-to-back titles at the Louisiana Classics (207-11) and Texas Relays (209-8) to open the campaign, and he will look to make it three in a row on Saturday. After clocking a career-best wind-aided time of 13.09w in her first collegiate final in the 100-meter hurdles last weekend, Gordon will debut in the 400 hurdles at the Battle on the Bayou meet.
Also coming off personal-best performances at the Texas Relays last weekend are senior All-American Tori Bliss and sophomore Rebekah Wales as they will join Brown in leading the LSU throws group on Saturday.
Wales became the first Lady Tiger in 27 years to eclipse the 170-foot mark in the javelin with her performance last Friday as she launched a career-best mark of 176-5 in a third-place finish in the final at the Texas Relays this past weekend to rank No. 6 nationally in the event. Bliss followed by throwing a personal best of 178-4 on Saturday to match Wales’ effort with a third-place finish in the women’s discus final at Texas to take home the No. 7 national ranking in the event early in their 2015 outdoor seasons.
LSU’s home opener each season gives the fans their first look at the team’s 4×100-meter relays, and Saturday will be no different as the Tigers and Lady Tigers are in action ranked among the nation’s best for 2015.
The Tigers sprinted to the NCAA’s No. 2-ranked time in the 4×100-meter relay in 2015 in a runner-up finish at the Texas Relays on Saturday as the team of senior Joshua Thompson, senior Vernon Norwood, sophomore Tremayne Acy and senior Aaron Ernest crossed the finish line with a seasonal best of 38.93 seconds, just a split-second shy of Texas A&M’s national-leading 38.91 to win the event.
The Lady Tigers also cracked the NCAA’s Top 5 with their seasonal best in the Texas Relays final when the team of freshman Mikiah Brisco, freshman Aleia Hobbs, sophomore Jada Martin and sophomore Nataliyah Friar took third place in the race in 44.46 for the NCAA’s No. 5-ranked time in the event early in the 2015 outdoor season.
Other athletes highlighting Saturday’s events at the Battle on the Bayou meet will be the Tigers’ NCAA-title-contending 4×400-meter relay team; sophomores Blair Henderson in the men’s 800 meters, Jordan Moore in the men’s 110-meter hurdles and Morgan Schuetz in the women’s 1,500 meters; and both Brisco and Hobbs making their collegiate debuts outdoors in the women’s 100-meter dash.
Live results of this year’s Battle on the Bayou meet will be provided by Delta Timing and can be found online at http://deltatiming.com. Fans can also get live updates of the Tigers and Lady Tigers competing Saturday in following @LSUTrackField on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lsutrackfield and Instagram at http://instagram.com/lsutrackfield and also by liking LSU Track & Field on Facebook at http://facebook.com/lsutrackfield.
After playing host to the Battle on the Bayou on Saturday afternoon, the Tigers and Lady Tigers will head West for Spring Break as they head to Tucson, Arizona, to compete at this year’s Jim Click Shootout being held in the University of Arizona’s Roy P. Drachman Stadium on Saturday, April 11. It’s a meet that also features Illinois, Purdue and Southern California along with LSU and Arizona.