A multi-state field of up to 500 athletes is the goal for the organizers of the Air Force High School Indoor Open.
Folks around Colorado have come to know the Air Force High School Indoor Open as a staple of the indoor season. It's one of two opportunities each winter where local high school athletes get to compete on the oversized (six laps to a mile) indoor oval and the state-of-the-art jump and pole vault runways at the Cadet Field House.
And, after a couple of years of trying to pin down the best spot on the calendar for their meet, the Air Force Academy has settled on Saturday, February 8. That date is going to make a lot of folks happy.
First in the happy line are high school coaches from all around the state of Colorado. Previous editions of this meet have come on a Sunday, and that fact left a lot of coaches at home, since Sunday is the CHSAA no-contact day of the week.
Folks from Texas--a major target area for the meet organizers--will be pleased as well. "We're trying to avoid some big meets in Texas, and get more people up from Texas," explained meet director Scott Steffan, pole vault coach at the Air Force Academy.
And, of course, there will be a big round of applause from the folks who wanted to compete at both this meet and the Simplot Games. A couple of athletes managed the double last year, but it was a travel ordeal to do so. This year, the opportunity to do both comes without razor-thin margins on flight schedules. Simplot comes the following weekend.
Steffan continued, "Hopefully, all this will free it up for some people. We think we have a pretty nice deal to offer, and we want it to be more available for as many people as we can." It appears the Air Force Academy has scored a big success on that measure. And, it's also a success for the Air Force Academy in that this meet has historically produced a few athletes who later went on to be recruited by the Air Force Academy and eventually competed in Air Force blue and silver.
Meet advertising will reach out into the southwest region of the United States, plus into Kansas and Wyoming as well. Steffan is hoping to bring the level of participation up to about 500 athletes this year, an improvement of some 200 contestants over the last two years.
The meet will use more or less the same schedule of events that has been in place the last two years, with possible minor adjustments to accommodate extra heats and flights as needed. For your convenience, that schedule is reproduced below: