By Nate Allen
FAYETTEVILLE - The getting the feet wet stage of the indoor track season now past, the Arkansas Razorbacks men’s defending SEC champion team of Coach Chris Bucknam and nationally No. 1 ranked defending NCAA/SEC champion women’s team of Coach Lance Harter plunge full boar hosting the Razorback Invitational Friday and Saturday at the Randal Tyson Indoor Track.
In addition to Arkansas, men’s and women’s teams including LSU, Georgia, Missouri and Mississippi State from the SEC, Oregon, Stanford and Southern California, from the Pac 12, Oklahoma State and Iowa State from the Big 12 and Pittsburgh from the ACC are competing.
“The sprint powers of LSU, Oregon, Arkansas, and Georgia - that’s four of the best,” Harter said of the women’s meet. “The distances, Oregon and ourselves. LSU has good people. Stanford. Oklahoma State has a great middle distance crew.”
The women’s distance powers aim to NCAA qualify in Friday night’s distance medley.
“The distance medley is the highlight Friday,” Harter said. “Our distance medley could be very good. And with Stanford and Oregon joining ranks with Oklahoma State we’ll try and get that NCAA meet qualified.”
In Friday’s 7 p.m. DMR Harter leads off Krissy Gear in the 1,200, Shafiqua Maloney in the 800, Paris Peoples in the 400, and Lauren Gregory on the anchor mile.
“Those are four All-Americans,” Harter said. “They have a possibility of breaking our school record. If they can do that this early that would be demonstrable because that’s the second fastest run in NCAA history with Dominique Scott anchoring at I believe the NCAA Championships.”
Bucknam said his Hogs will try for a DMR qualifier later in the season but have plenty on their plate this weekend.
“We’re running the DMR at a later date so we’ll keep them fresh for individuals events this weekend,” Harter said of Amon Kemboi and Emmanuel Cheboson among others off his SEC Cross Country championship/nationally No. 4 cross country team in this weekend’s distances. “We’re running everything and every event has outstanding athletes.”
The heptathlon, always an event that assistant coach Travis
Geopfert wants to have early qualifiers, is a key event this weekend, Bucknam said.
Bucknam’s men’s idle last week in training while the women competed. are unranked by the United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches, but only because his Hogs are untested, Bucknam said.
“This is really our first big meet,” Bucknam said. “So they (rankings) are going off what happened last week. I suspect we’ll be ranked after this weekend for sure.”