In its first full outdoor competition of the season, the Idaho track and field team went to Spokane and collected 23 individual victories at the Sam Adams Classic at Whitworth College.
Parker Wilson | Argonaut
The sprinters crouch down ready to spring off the blocks during Thursday’s practice at the Dan O’Brien Track and Field Complex.
It was a performance that even earned Idaho the men’s WAC Player of the Week award for Matt Sullivan. That was just a season warm-up, Idaho coach Wayne Phipps said.
“We really took the approach to this meet to be a rust-buster,” Phipps said. “We actually trained through this meet, which means we worked out hard all the way up to it, and the reason why we do that is to prepare more for the end of the season meets rather than a couple of the early meets that we go to.”
The Vandals will split up into two squads this weekend in order to attend two different meets that Phipps described as another opener for his team — one that will focus on results and competition rather than getting into fitness.
“As much as that first weekend was our opener, this is kind of our true opening weekend in terms of the first meet that we’ve decided to focus on the competition rather than the training throughout the week,” Phipps said. “We’re looking definitely to see some improvements over last weekend. I feel like we can get a few NCAA qualifying marks out of it.”
A larger group will head to Spokane Falls Community College for the WAR VII meet of Northwest rivals. Phipps will lead a smaller group to Tempe, Ariz., for the Sun Angel Classic — a meet that will include teams such as Penn State, Texas A&M and Arizona State.
It’s the second year in a row that Idaho has headed down to Arizona, though Phipps originally didn’t anticipate having to split his squads to make the meet. A scheduling change moved the meets to be on the same weekend. For him, both meets are important.
“It’d be nice to be able to support (the WAR VII) in full, but we really knew the benefit of going down to this meet (in Tempe). It will really benefit us well, for the rest of the year, taking a small group to ASU,” Phipps said.
The group going to Spokane will be competing in the second of three events the Vandals will be competing in up north. Idaho will be back at Whitworth competing in the Whitworth Invitational on April 17.
“We really try to support the local meets as much as possible, we have a lot of those local schools support our indoor meets,” Phipps said. “Without those teams, we couldn’t have the successful indoor meets that we do.”
Phipps said better results for NCAA qualifying scores could come from Arizona, where the challenge is overcoming the weather.
“It’s really exciting, we went to this meet last year, we hadn’t been down to this meet in 15 years or something. We had a really great experience last year, had some great early season marks. We’re hoping to do the same thing this year,” he said. “Great weather, maybe a little too hot, we handled the heat really well last year and came out with some really good marks. Expecting the same thing this year.”
Sean Kramer can be reached at [email protected]