BATON ROUGE — The NCAA Indoor champion and second-ranked LSU women’s track and field team and the second-ranked Tigers head to Austin this weekend for the 75th-annual Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays.
Action gets underway at Mike A. Myers Stadium on Thursday and continues through Saturday for the event that annually draws the premier teams in track and field and crowds of better than 20,000.
“It’s one of the greatest competitions in our sport,” said LSU head coach Pat Henry. “It’s a chance for our athletes to compete against the best in the nation and do so in front of a giant audience — a track knowledgeable audience. The environment at the Texas Relays always lends itself to tremendous performances and I don’t see this year being any different.”
LSU competes in Texas for the second consecutive week after coming up with a breakout performance at the Tom Tellez Invitational in Houston last weekend. The Tigers and Lady Tigers combined to post four NCAA automatic qualifying marks to go along with nine provisionals.
Several LSU athletes highlight the field on Thursday afternoon as competition gets underway. Lueroy Colquhoun will compete in the 400-meter hurdles for the third consecutive week after showing promising results with a pair of runner-up finishes in each of his first two outings.
Colquhoun ranks second in the nation with a time of 50.11 and will be among the top contenders for the Texas Relays’ title when preliminary action gets underway Thursday evening.
Likhaya Dayile, fresh off an NCAA provisional showing in the 10,000-meter run at Stanford last weekend, will try his hand at the 5,000-meter run Thursday evening and will take aim at an extremely competitive field.
LSU’s hammer throwers will be put to the test on Thursday, as Javier Nieto, a third place finisher in the hammer a year ago, will compete as will the Lady Tigers’ up-and-coming tandem of Candice Gonzalez and Mallory McDonald.
A majority of LSU’s athletes will open up on Friday when a bulk of relays and field events get underway. The Lady Tigers are the defending champions in both the 4×100 and 4×200-meter relays while Olympian Walter Davis will try to successfully defend his triple jump title.
With relays being the major theme of the competition, LSU find itself as the team to beat in several races. The Tigers and Lady Tigers both lead the nation in the 4×100-meter relay heading into this weekend. The Tigers also lead the nation in the 4×400-meter relay and hope to avenge a defeat to Baylor at the 2001 Texas Relays.