PROVO, Utah - The majority of BYU men’s track and field team heads to Princeton, N.J., this weekend for the 2013 IC4A Championships.
Although the meet is scored, BYU is not competing for a team championship as many of the events take place on Sunday. Instead, the athletes will use the championships as a final opportunity to qualify for the NCAA West Preliminaries held in two weeks.
“The reason we’re going to this meet is simply to improve our marks,” Head Coach Mark Robison said. “It’s an enormous meet. There will be a lot of schools there that we never see except at nationals, so it will be fun for our guys to compete against them.”
Those who have yet to hit qualifying marks for the NCAA Preliminaries and are in position to do so are Korey Smith in the 400-meter hurdles, Justin Hedin in the 800-meter run, Curtis Carr in 3000-meter steeplechase and Ryan Jones and Jared Rohatinsky in the 1500-meter run. The 4x400-meter relay team will also compete with the intent of qualifying for the NCAA Preliminaries. In the Decathlon, Chase Dalton and Josh Weirich will attempt to qualify for the NCAA Championships.
Because many of the field events at the IC4A Championships will be held on Sunday, the Cougars will also send a small group of athletes to compete at the Georgia Tech Invitational. Among those competing at Georgia Tech will be Dennis Christensen, who is on the verge of qualifying for the NCAA Preliminaries in the shot put.
The Cougars go into the meets this weekend with the team fully rested after a weekend off. Robison hopes this will lead to the team looking sharp going into the championship portion of the season.
“Regardless of whether or not our athletes have already qualified for NCAA prelims, we want everyone competing this weekend to have improvements so we’re headed in the right direction,” Robison said.
Meet information and results for the IC4A championships and Georgia Tech Invitational can be found at lancertiming.com and ramblinwreck.com, respectively.