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Louisville Track and Field Ready to Bring in the New Year at Indiana Open
Jan. 9, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The nationally ranked University of Louisville men's and women's indoor track and field teams will compete in their second meet and first of the new year when they travel to Bloomington, Ind. for the Indiana Open on Saturday at the Harry Gladstein Fieldhouse. "This will be our first opportunity of the new year, in order to really begin to hone in on where we are going as a team," said U of L head coach Ron Mann. "We will have our top athletes competing in each of their expert events." The Cards will have 31 women and 15 men, including mid-year arrivals transfer Michael Johnson, Jr. and freshman Jacques Caldwell, competing at the meet. The even will begin at 11:00 a.m. ET, with the women's 60-meter semifinals run and is scheduled to conclude at 3:10 p.m. ET, with the men's 4x400-meter relay. U of L, which is coming off over a month layoff, had an impressive start to the 2008-09 season in which they won six event titles, had two NCAA Championship provisional qualifiers and set a school record on Dec. 5 at the Fast Start Invitational hosted by Southern Illinois University. The No. 25 Cardinal women, who received their first-ever national ranking in program history on Thursday, were led by transfer Saravia Richardson who won the preliminaries and set the school record in the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.57. Sophomore D'Ana McCarty and freshman Khadija Abdullah earned NCAA provisional qualifying marks. McCarty finished first for the Cards in the weight throw with a mark of 67-00.50, the second best in school history, while Abdullah made an impressive debut winning the shot put title in her first collegiate meet with a throw of 50-11.00. For the No. 9 Cardinal men, two-time All-American junior Tone Belt won the long jump with a leap of 24-01.00. He also finished second in the high jump clearing 6-10.25. It was a good start to the year for Belt who sat out last season to focus on the 2008 Olympic Trials.
"We are really looking at this as our coming out party," said Mann. "In our meet at the Fast Start, it was a fast start for a few individuals, and now this is more of a team environment in a venue that is a very good venue." The Cards will return to action on Jan. 16-17 at the Kentucky Invitational in Lexington, Ky. |
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