Idaho track and field is returning to Washington State on Friday for the second time this season. Two weeks after competing in Pullman for the WSU Indoor Open, the Vandals return for the Cougar Indoor.
During the short two weeks of competition, Idaho has started off with multiple athletes setting personal bests in both the opening meet and last weekend’s pair of home meets.
“I thought we started off well, but we really improved a lot I thought over this last weekend,” Idaho coach Wayne Phipps said. “I thought we had a fantastic weekend, and the thing is we have not competed everybody yet. We are still a few key people away from competing our full team, so with us doing this well at this point I am very excited. That’s the goal is to keep progressing from weekend to weekend.”
Phipps said that for this weekend’s meet, he is looking for improvement in not only the speed and technical skills of his athletes, but is putting runners in different events than normal to help them progress as an athlete.
“It’s a multi-faceted reason behind it (changing events),” Phipps said. “It breaks up the mental monotony of doing an event, they get excited to do a new event. But then dropping down in distance helps speed work and going over distance helps the endurance a little bit, so we look at the race as a race but also a workout.”
He said the overall goal is to prepare his team for meets down the road that have more of an impact on the WAC Tournament.
“I am looking at this weekend as a chance to help me prepare for WAC coming up in a few weeks in Seattle,” junior Jesse Villines said. “This weekend I am looking forward to the 60 hurdles. I did not get the best start last weekend on the 60, so I am looking forward to doing that.”
Last weekend, Villines set multiple personal best records and won two individual events including the 60-meter dash.
Competition will start off at WSU Friday with the women’s pentathlon, half of the men’s heptathlon and both men’s and women’s field events.
This meet will be the first time this season that the Vandals will compete in the pentathlon, which is made up of five running and field events, and the heptathlon which has seven. Idaho has two men returning to the heptathlon this weekend. Senior Colin Briggs and sophomore Drew Thompson have done the event before, but this weekend will be the first time true freshman Taylor Sheppard will do her first collegiate multi-event.
“Those guys keep pretty busy, we coach the multi-events by committee,” Phipps said. “It’s kind of mastering the time management organization skills to get all their practices and still work around their classes. They put in some serious time … more so than any other event on the team.”
Curtis Ginnetti can be reached at [email protected]
