When things go right the first time, everyone wants an encore performance.
The UCLA men’s track and field team hopes to do just that when they travel back to Seattle for the University of Washington Invitational tonight and Saturday.
After a strong showing by the distance team two weeks ago at the UW Indoor Preview, the Bruins will send a full team with members from all event groups: distance, sprints, jumps and throws. They will be competing against a strong field, with athletes coming from the Pac-10, SEC and other conferences.
“Part of the job is not to get lost in the numbers,” coach Art Venegas said. “There’s so many teams and so many competitive athletes ““ we don’t want, especially the freshmen, to be looking around.
“That’s our job (as coaches): to keep them focused and locked into the task at hand.”
Many athletes will be making their season debuts this weekend, notably redshirt junior Boldizsar Kocsor (throws), redshirt senior John Caulfield (throws), senior Chris Bencomo (pole vault), freshman Daniel Kirkpatrick (jumps) and freshman Jonathan Clark (jumps).
For the freshmen, this will be their first chance to compete in a UCLA uniform. The competition will be different from the high school level they are used to. However, they expect to do well and show they belong at the collegiate level.
“It has been a smooth transition from high school to the Division-1 level,” said Clark, who will compete in the high jump and long jump. “With my events, nothing really changes so it’s not very different.”
The distance squad hopes to have another good weekend after the success from the first meet. The Bruins will be lead by redshirt senior Austin Ramos and junior Laef Barnes in the 3000 meters and freshman Cory Primm in the 800m. Barnes and Primm provisionally qualified for nationals with lifetime bests in the mile and 800m, respectively.
“The competition wasn’t too much faster (than what I expected),” Primm said. “I wasn’t blown out of the water. I could stay with them.”
For those who did not make the trip two weeks ago, there is a great sense of eagerness to finally get the season started. After months of training, the team is ready to go against real competition.
“We’re excited, it’s always fun to get everyone going,” Venegas said. “This is what this meet is for. The kind of tests we have been doing have not been indicative yet of real meet situations. You have to put them in that to find out where they’re really at.”