BATON ROUGE – The LSU Track & Field teams will compete in one of the featured meets of the indoor season when they travel to Birmingham, Alabama, to battle the top teams from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 conferences for the Conference Clash Power Five Invitational running Friday and Saturday at the Birmingham Crossplex.
Auburn and Tennessee are playing host to the inaugural Conference Clash this weekend as the meet will match eight SEC teams against seven Power Five programs from across the country.
Joining LSU, Auburn and Tennessee for the Southeastern Conference are Alabama, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, South Carolina and Vanderbilt as they will face off against the likes of Arizona, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Ohio State, Purdue, Southern California and Texas in the two-day scored competition.
The teams will compete in a dual-meet format with only two scorers from each side factoring in the overall team scoring throughout the competition for the individual events with five points for first place, three points for second place, two points for third place and one point for fourth place. Only one relay team can score for either side with five points for first place and three points for second place.
Friday’s action gets underway at 2 p.m. CT in the field events followed by the first preliminary races on the track at 5 p.m. Saturday’s events continue at 11 a.m. in the field events and at Noon on the track.
Delta Timing will provide live results from the meet as fans can follow the action at http://deltatiming.com. Fans can also receive live updates of the Tigers and Lady Tigers competing throughout the meet on Friday and Saturday by following @LSUTrackField on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/lsutrackfield and by liking LSU Track & Field on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/lsutrackfield.
This will be the first of two trips for the Tigers and Lady Tigers to the Birmingham Crossplex this season as the city of Birmingham will also play host to the 2016 NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships to end the season with the championship being held March 11-12. This marks the fifth-straight season in which LSU will compete at the Birmingham Crossplex.
“We’ll have a great idea of where we stack up on a national level as a team this early in the season with what we do in this meet,” said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. “We love these types of scored meets that give an added edge to the competition that will make for a great experience for our athletes and those fans coming out to watch the meet. There will be some tremendous performances in a meet like this.”
Just like the Purple Tiger and Bayou Bengal invitational meets in each of the last two weeks, many LSU athletes will continue to open up their indoor seasons in their primary events in Birmingham this weekend.
Among the Tigers and Lady Tigers headlining at the Birmingham Crossplex will be LSU’s junior All-American long jumper Nataliyah Friar as she steps onto the runway for the first time in 2016 after running the 60 meters in each of her first two meets of the season. Friar has already shown great progression in her 60-meter personal best in these first two meets as she has run a seasonal best of 7.43 seconds.
Friar is the reigning NCAA Indoor Bronze Medalist in the long jump after jumping an indoor personal best of 21 feet, 0 inches on her final jump in the final at the NCAA Indoor Championships a year ago. She then won a second All-America certificate in the outdoor season when she placed sixth nationally in the triple jump at the NCAA Outdoor meet.
Another Lady Tiger who earned All-America honors at last year’s NCAA Indoor Championships will compete in her event for the first time when sophomore Mikiah Brisco steps onto the track for the 60-meter dash.
Brisco, who clocked a seasonal-best and personal-best time of 8.35 in her first 60-meter hurdles race of the season at the Bayou Bengal Invitational last weekend, was the fifth-place finisher in the 60-meter final during the NCAA Indoor Championships last March to earn her first career All-America honor. She will run her first 60-meter race of the season this weekend with a PR of 7.23 run in last year’s NCAA semifinals.
Junior sprinter Jada Martin is yet another returning All-American for the Lady Tigers who will line up in her specialty event for the first time this indoor season when she takes her mark in the women’s 200-meter event at the Birmingham Crossplex. Martin qualified for her first NCAA final in the 200 meters at the NCAA Outdoor Championships last spring, earning an eighth-place finish overall.
Lady Tiger freshmen Kortnei Johnson and Rachel Misher are off to a flying start to their collegiate careers following their 1-2 finish in the 60-meter final at the Bayou Bengal Invitational last weekend, and both are set to line join Martin in running their first 200-meter races of the season at the Birmingham Crossplex.
Johnson smashed her personal-best time with a season-opening 7.37 in her first collegiate 60 meters in the qualifying round at the Bayou Bengal Invitational before winning her first event title as a Lady Tiger with a run of 7.40 in the final last Saturday afternoon. Misher also sprinted to a personal best of 7.43 in the prelims before finishing runner-up to Johnson with a 7.46.
Just one week after she became the third-fastest 3,000-meter runner indoors in Lady Tiger history, junior All-America candidate Morgan Schuetz will be back on the track to run the event as part of Saturday’s action on the banked track at the Birmingham Crossplex. Schuetz’s indoor 3k personal best from last weekend converted to 9 minutes, 36.91 seconds on a banked track to rank her No. 3 in school history in the event.
The Tigers will also debut a host of talented athletes during the competition this weekend, led by junior Tremayne Acy in the wake of his victory in the 60-meter dash at the Bayou Bengal Invitational where he raced to a season-opening 6.69 for first place in the final. He is scheduled to run his first 200 meters of the season along with the 60-meter dash while in Birmingham this weekend.
Like Martin, Acy was also an NCAA finalist in the 200 meters for the first time at last year’s NCAA Outdoor Championships where he sprinted to All-America honors with a fourth-place finish nationally in the event.
Another Tiger looking to build on his season-opening success from the Bayou Bengal Invitational a week ago is junior Jordan Moore, who is among the favorites to take home the title in the men’s 60-meter hurdles this weekend. Moore nearly matched his seasonal best from 2015 with a season-opening 7.82 in qualifying before winning the sprint hurdles in 7.83 last Saturday.
The Conference Clash Power Five Invitational will also feature the likes of All-America hopefuls Michael Cherry (200 meters), Fitzroy Dunkley (200 meters) and Cyril Grayson (400 meters) running for the Tigers.
After representing the SEC at the Conference Clash Power Five Invitational in Birmingham this weekend, the Tigers and Lady Tigers will be back on the road next weekend with their first of three trips to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to compete at this year’s Razorback Invitational being held on Jan. 29-30 at the Randal Tyson Track Center. LSU will then return to Fayetteville on two other occasions for the Tyson Invitational being held Feb. 12-13 and the SEC Indoor Championships running from Feb. 26-27.