26 top-10 finishes by the New Mexico track and field team made for an impressive start to the season, but nowhere near the squad’s ultimate goal as the season continues to heat up.
“Our feet are ready to go, and let people see some improvements this weekend,” head coach Joe Franklin said.
The Lobos will host the New Mexico Team Invitational at the Albuquerque Convention Center on Saturday, eyeing some more sterling performances at second home meet.
The previous meet — the team’s season opener — was not a team-scored event, but gave athletes a good opportunity to find out where they were in their training.
“We are very worried coming into the meet only because we are only back in school for four days,” Franklin said.
Franklin said it was obvious that the student athletes had disciplined themselves well over the break.
The prominent performances in the past weekend came from a variety of events, giving evidence to the assiduity of Lobos.
Jannell Hadnot leaped 42 feet 9 inches to win the women’s triple jump title, Josh Kerr grabbed runner-up in the men’s 800-meter run with a time of 1:51.37 and the men’s 1600-meter relay team finished a third place in 3:15.34.
The team will likely want to take some momentum from what happened last weekend into this team meet.
Franklin said, for the most part, any available athlete will be participating at the meet.
“It will be pretty much everybody is competing, only three or four people will not compete,” he said.
Some distance runners from cross country will be held out to keep their feet for later competitions, but others might see some of their first action of the year.
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“They won’t all be in their primary events,” Franklin said. “But it’s the first time that the majority of the team will compete.”
The Team Invitational is a one-day meet where Texas Christian University, Kansas State University, Utah State University and three other teams will join New Mexico to compete.
“The expectation is to go out and compete hard at this very small meet,” Franklin said. “Just little improvements all without getting sick or injured injuries.”
The head coach admitted a big challenge for the team was that it had a little bit of flu going around right now, and it is very difficult to perform when that happens.
Even if the team has some athletes that sit out due to sickness, the Lobos still expect some brilliant personal performances.
“You’ll see more personal records only because a lot of people are switching events,” Franklin said.
He said the level of competition will hopefully push people to post personal records and some will compete in multiple events as well. The coach said the men who ran the 600-meter race, may run in both the 600 and 800-meter events this weekend.
UNM posted strong individual showings, but was not able to notch a top team score at the same meet last year.
“You can’t control what they do when they come into Albuquerque,” Franklin said. “We can only control what we do.”
Franklin said the goal for the meet on Saturday is simple.
“Make sure they are prepared, have a great opportunity to run fast, jump high and throw far,” he said.
Bo Yu is a sports reporter for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers track and field, cross country and volleyball. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Bo_YuB.
