George Wood | Argonaut
Idaho hurdlers Black Gerling, left, and Jacob Legge practice sprints Thursday in the Kibbie Dome. Idaho opens its indoor track and field season Friday with WSU Cougar Indoor in Pullman.
A new season is underway this weekend as the Idaho track and field team makes the short trip to WSU Friday for the annual season opening indoor track meet.
The WSU Cougar Indoor Open has started off the indoor track and field season for Idaho since 2008. According to Idaho coach Wayne Phipps, the meet is important to the team because it is the first time many of the team members have competed in months.
“We have an inner-squad meet towards the beginning of December two purposes: one, to break up the monotony of training all the time, and two to see where you’re at in your training,” Phipps said. “This meet (WSU Courgar Indoor) is a chance for us to get the dust off and for some of the athletes, this is their first collegiate experience.”
Phipps said this meet has always been viewed by him and his staff as a learning experience for the team as they start the new season.
“I do not think necessarily the absolute performances are that crucial but learning experiences are and it’s a good meet to do that,” he said. “WSU is a very good program, but it’s a low key meet … it is not crucial that we are winning all of our events, but that we’re as good as we can possibly be at the end of the season. Our goal every season is to win a conference championship.”
Phipps said that his team this year is very balanced on both the men’s and women’s teams. While he feels that Idaho’s strengths lay in its long distance runners, he said that there is at least one “key performer” in every event that has the potential to do very well this season.
Idaho will need that level of competition this year as they will be facing tough opponents in both Utah State and Grand Canyon.
Utah Valley swept this week’s WAC Athletes of the Week honors after a stellar performance at last week’s BYU Invitational. Grand Canyon has recently made the switch from a Division II school to competing at the Division I level. Before the switch, Grand Canyon was ranked, at times, No. 1 in Division II.
Grand Canyon has athletes that, while competing at the Division II level, would be Division I All-Americans, so they are going to be strong competition, Phipps said.
Idaho is not without high hopes due to some pre-season hype of their own. The Idaho women’s team is ranked No. 41 in the nation by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association Preseason rankings.
“This is what we prepare for the last few months. For coaches and athletes as well, we will get to see how the hard work has paid off and it’s always a little nervous,” Phipps said.
Curtis Ginnetti can be reached at [email protected]