This weekend’s Purple Tiger Invitational is the next step on the season-long ladder known as indoor track and field, according to coach Pat Henry.
The Purple Tiger Invitational begins at 9:30 a.m. this Saturday at the Carl Maddox Fieldhouse.
A week after qualifying two athletes to the NCAA Championships and provisionally qualifying nine more, Henry said LSU is looking to embrace another early season meet.
“It’s just another time to get on the track,” Henry said. “We will rest some people this weekend because our facility does not yield itself to getting some things done.”
Henry said because the corners are not banked at the Maddox Fieldhouse running anything above 60 meters will be difficult.
“Certain people will just not run because it is not smart,” Henry said. “We will wait to get on a track that is more conducive to being successful.”
One of those athletes not running will be sophomore sprinter Kelly Willie, who along with senior jumper LeJuan Simon, were the two LSU athletes who earned automatic NCAA qualifying marks at last Friday’s Arkansas Invitational.
Willie posted a time of 20.83 in the 200 meters to earn the berth, while Simon leaped 53-9 in the triple jump to earn the automatic invitation.
Willie said qualifying at the first meet of the season came as a shock to him.
“[Qualifying] was a great surprise for me,” Willie said. “It was something that I wanted to do, but I did not know I was going to qualify that early in the season. I am real happy that it happened and it lets me know where I am in the season as far as my sprinting condition and that lets me know where I am in the 400 meters.”
Henry said very seldom does even one athlete earn an automatic NCAA bid in the first meet. Henry said he hopes his team can continue the trend this weekend at home.
“I think that we need to just take the next step on the ladder,” Henry said. “We are looking at that next step this weekend with the final step trying to get to the top of the ladder at the NCAA’s.”
Jeffrey Fisher, senior long distance runner, said the early automatic bids for Willie and Simon have inspired the rest of the team to give their best each meet.
“When you see somebody next to you go automatic it makes you that much more motivated to do the same thing,” Fisher said. “We kind of really feed off each other as a team. If we see one person go out there and win then we want to do the same thing. We all understand that our individual competition build in into the overall team goal.”
In the latest Trackwire Top 25, the Lady Tigers are ranked No.1 for a second straight week, while the Tigers jumped two spots to No.3.