March 12, 2010
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ---- The Samford University track and field team will open the 2010 outdoor season Saturday, March 13, at the `Southern Invitational hosted by Birmingham-Southern University.
Samford will compete in the `Southern Invitational the weekend before taking a rest for Samford's Spring Break next week. However, Head Coach Rod Tiffin said that there will be no excuses for competing hard.
"This weekend will allow us to ease into the outdoor season," Tiffin said. "We will go out and try to enjoy the weekend before we begin Spring Break and then get back to serious business, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to go out and compete hard. It is just a lot less pressure than our last competition which was the SoCon Championships."
The Bulldogs look to build on an indoor season that culminated in a third place finish for the men and a fourth place finish for the women at the 2010 Southern Conference Indoor Championships. Throughout the indoor season, Samford set 21 school records and won 13 individual events at various meets.
"We expect even bigger things in outdoor than indoor," Tiffin said. "We try to be successful indoors but track is truly an outdoor sport. When the season cranks up outdoors, I expect us to take our game to an even higher level."
The captains for the outdoor season are Patrick Wells and Morgan Tyler for the field, Donald Cooper and Ashley Dance for sprints and hurdles and Blaise Carie and Hillary Neal for distance. Five of the six are school record holders. Wells holds the outdoor pole vault record set in his first season as Bulldog last year while Tyler in the indoor triple jump record holder and shares the outdoor 4x400 relay record with fellow Bulldogs Dance and Neal.
Dance and Tyler also share the indoor 4x400 record while Dance set the 300-meter record this indoor season. Neal shares the indoor distance medley record in addition to the outdoor 4x400 and also holds the records for the indoor and outdoor 800 meters, the indoor mile, the outdoor 1500 meters and the 3000-meter steeplechase. Cooper set the indoor 200 meters record this season.
The `Southern Invitational begins Saturday morning at 10 a.m. CST, with the hammer, shot put, long jump and high jump in the field events and the 100 meters in the track events. The hurdles will follow at 10:30 a.m., before the women's 5000 meters at 11 a.m., and the men's 5000 meters at 11:54 a.m. At 12:30 p.m., the pole vault and discus will commence, and at 1 p.m., the 4x100 meter relay.
At 1:20 p.m., the 1500-meter races will be run, and at 2:15 p.m., the 200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters, 100-meter finals, the hurdles finals, the steeplechase and the 4x400 meter relay. The meet will then wrap up at 3 p.m., with the javelin and triple jump.
A full recap and results will be available on www.samfordsports.com upon the conclusion of the meet.
