It's time to bust out of your blocks, because the season is now upon us. Colorado Track XC file photo by Alan Versaw.
Don't let the fact that there are only two meets in the state this weekend mess with your perceptions.
This weekend is all about getting track and field restarted, and there are plenty of athletes champing at the bit to get it going again.
Action starts today at the Air Force Academy at 2 PM. Although this is a college meet, you will find a few club-affiliated high school entries in the mix. Colorado Track XC will be on-site with coverage. Look for results, photos, and coverage starting tonight, but probably not completing until sometime tomorrow morning.
We don't know exactly what will take place this afternoon and evening (and, if we did, it wouldn't be any fun to go and watch), but we look forward to several things.
For starters, a very large number of former Colorado high school athletes will be on display at this meet, including a few notables who have even used up their collegiate eligibility. In addition to local schools Metro State, Air Force, Colorado, Colorado State, and the University of Northern Colorado being on hand, Hastings (out of Nebraska) will also be bringing several former Colorado high school athletes back for a taste of home.
For the current Colorado high schoolers, we'll watch with eager anticipation to see if Javan Lanier can bust through 7.00 in the 60. We'll be on the edge of our seats to see if Shayna Yon can turn aside the challenges from a field of collegians in the women's 60. We'll see what Brock Miller has in his tank for the first 400 of the year. We'll check in to see if Kiara Kearney can break through the 5-5 ceiling in the high jump. We'll await the opportunity to observe what Anne Lauder and Kiana Gomez can show us in the triple jump.
Beyond and between all that, we'll be entertained by performances from world-class athletes like Aikaterini Stefanidi and Andrej Poljanec in the pole vaul,t and from NCAA-nationals qualifiers like Aaliyah Pete, Alex Kizirian, Patrick Corona, and Trevor Brown.
The bulk of the high school action, however, takes place Saturday at Balch Field House in Boulder. Judging by the size of the list of entries, they're going to be fully challenged to keep this meet on schedule to start the high school events by anything close to noon.
I can't begin to list each of the marquee matchups shaping up for tomorrow, but a few that you won't want to miss include the girls 60 meters (with 15 seeds below eight seconds), an intriguing pair of fields for both the boys and girls 300 meters, Ryan Younggreen, Trenton Stringari, and Alex Miller going head-to-head in the 60 hurdles, a girls 60 hurdles field that includes five seeds under nine seconds, and loaded fields in both the boys and girls long jump.
Results go up here as soon as we see them, and a coverage summary of the meet will go up as well.
Once the dust settles, we'll check in with the national rankings to see how Colorado is stacking up against the mostly Eastern Seaboard states who make a very big deal of indoor track and field at the scholastic level.