The last weekend of the track and field regular season features two meets for the Vandals. One is the only home meet of the outdoor season — the Vandal Jamboree at the Dan O’Brian Track & Field Complex on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, the Vandals will also send a small squad to Eugene, Ore., for the prestigious Oregon Twilight where they will get one last chance to secure NCAA Championship qualifying marks during the regular season.
Jesse Hart | Argonaut
Freshman hurdler Nicole Dorsey practices Thursday at the Dan O’Brien Track & Field Complex. The Vandal track team will compete Friday and Saturday at the Vandal Jamboree and Friday at the Oregon Twilight meet, hosted by the University of Oregon.
“For the most part, we’ll have everybody competing at home,” Idaho coach Wayne Phipps said. “But we will most likely be taking a select few over to Oregon … for a chance to bump up to that top 48 to qualify for nationals.”
At the time of the interview, Phipps said he didn’t know which Vandals would travel to the Oregon Twilight for their last meet.
The Vandals have had only one regular season home meet the last two seasons, but they took full advantage of the chance to compete at home last season. Last year, Idaho earned eight victories while also posting six all-time top-10 marks at the Vandal Jamboree. Returning victors from last year include Kyle Rothwell (hammer), Mike Marshall (javelin), Jason Lorentz (long jump), Ailene MacPherson (5000-meters), Dylan Watts (pole-vault) and three participants from the women’s 4×100-meter team, of Mercedes Blackwood, Allee Cooper and Kelly Jacka.
Having a home meet at the end of the season offers several advantages to the Vandals. Not only do the athletes get to stay home and focus on finals, but they also get to compete in front of family and friends for their last meet of the regular season.
Idaho senior Ugis Svazs said his teammate Mike Marshall will have both friends and family at the Vandal Jamboree and Svazs expects to have some friends come out for the meet as well.
“It’s a nice opportunity to compete at home with good weather on an awesome track, (while) not having to travel during finals just before a big trip to conference,” Phipps said.
The Vandal Jamboree and Oregon Twilight are Idaho’s last preparation for the 2013 WAC Championships in Arlington, Texas. The indoor championships showed that the new WAC is harder than ever with Texas schools sweeping both the men’s and women’s championships. Texas-San Antonio won on the men’s side while Texas State claimed the women’s title.
“As a team, I hope everybody will get at least close to (personal records) so we can
compete with the Texas schools as I heard they are pretty strong,” Svazs said.
The Vandals head into the WAC Championships as underdogs but Phipps said Idaho is a better outdoor team than indoor team this year. The Vandals took home the conference title at last year’s outdoor WAC Championships.
“Our goal is always to do our best and have our best team performance,” Idaho coach Julie Taylor said. “We have a lot of good kids that are sitting in good position as far as overall rankings. Hopefully we come away with some titles and we’ll try to do our best to compete at our highest level there.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at arg-sports@uidaho.edu