With only two meets left in the indoor season before the NCAA Indoor Championships, it could be now or never for the men’s track and field team to earn some qualifiers for the national meet.
Today and Saturday the Bruins will compete in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Indoor Championships at the Dempsey Indoor facility at the University of Washington. The environment will be familiar: Two other meets were held there in the beginning of the season, with several lifetime bests achieved.
“It’s a great place to compete,” redshirt junior Boldizsar Kocsor said. “It means a little more this time since it’s the conference championship.”
Kocsor will be competing in the weight throw and trying to improve his 69 feet, 10 1â„4 inch throw to guarantee a spot in nationals. Though he holds the top conference mark and ranks in the top 10 nationally, he is only provisionally qualified.
The only Bruin to automatically qualify for the NCAA Championships is redshirt senior John Caulfield. He will lead the team into Seattle ranking No. 5 in the nation with a 63-7 throw in the shot put.
Besides those two throwers, there are other Bruins ready to reach nationals who have a good chance this weekend. Coach Art Venegas feels his team has an opportunity to turn in some good results.
“Our primary goal is still to qualify people for nationals, and our secondary goal is to get a good team score,” Venegas said. “There are a few guys knocking on the door (for nationals) … and they need to improve quite a bit to get into the meet.”
One of those athletes is redshirt junior Dustin DeLeo. DeLeo is second in the conference in the pole vault, and his 17-1 height is tied for 10th in the nation. He is confident that he will continue the indoor season with a consistent performance along with the rest of the team.
“The whole team has an optimistic mindset,” DeLeo said. “Everyone is ready to go. A lot of people are healthy, and we have a good team going.”
The distance medley-relay team, distance runners junior Laef Barnes and freshman Cory Primm, freshman jumper Jonathan Clark, and sophomore thrower Darius Savage round out the group that seems to have the best chance at qualifying because their marks are so close, though Venegas said there is “always room for surprises.”
Aside from the individuals preparing for nationals, the secondary goal, the team’s performance, will be a focus. The MPSF Championships will be a meet with tough competition that will need the athletes to perform at a high level.
The MPSF is made up of most of the Pac-10 schools with a few schools from the Big West Conference as well.
A conference title is definitely within reach for the Bruins, and it is something they want to achieve after such a strong indoor season. Last year they finished ninth, and they hope to improve that result this weekend.
“It would be good to win the conference, and it’s something we can do,” said Kocsor. “We want to show the rest of the nation we are for real and build our confidence for nationals.”