 "Photo: Jon Eilts")
The Texas A&M men's and women's track teams will look for back-to-back meet wins in College Station when they host the Southeast Conference Friday and Saturday in the Texas A&M Showdown: Big 12 vs. SEC.
The Aggies will join Texas and Missouri for the Big 12 to compete against the Southeastern Conference's Louisiana State, Mississippi and Florida, but will still be in competition with each of them.
"We are competing against everybody in the Big 12 too, but it will be fun to have a team score competition that's one conference against another," said Head Coach Pat Henry.
Justin Oliver, a senior environmental studies major, said he expects more competition than the Aggies' previous meet, and his team is capable of stepping up to the challenge.
Oliver is preparing for the 400-meter race and the 4x400-meter relay. His 400-meter time of 47.15 seconds puts him second in the Big 12 conference, behind Texas Tech's Gill Roberts' time of 46.59 and the 4x400-meter relay time of 3:10.49 puts the Aggies fourth, two seconds behind the leader, Baylor.
"I'm just looking forward to it because I opened up last week at this meet and I saw where I was at, so I know I can try to go faster," Oliver said.
The meet will be on Friday and Saturday with the pentathlons and heptathlons beginning on Friday and ending early Saturday. The women participate in the pentathlons, which include events such as the 60-meter hurdles, the high jump, the shot put, the long jump and the 800-meter run. The men compete in the heptathlons, which include the 60-meter dash, the long jump, the shot put, the high jump, the 60-meter hurdles, the pole vault and the 1,000-meter run.
The Aggies are coming off their first home meet, where the women beat Tennessee 83-69 and the men beat Texas 81-77.
Senior communication major Jennifer Davidson said she enjoyed having the previous meet at home because it was more stressful when the team traveled to outdoor meets.
"We had a good opening meet," Henry said. "We had a great crowd. We had a lot of students. We had almost 1,000 students. That's a great opening meet for us. We had over 3,000 in the building for the first time we opened the doors. That's exceptional and we are excited about that. We hope we can get an even bigger crowd this week."
Oliver said he the best part of having a home meet is not the competition, but the familiarity of the track.
"Normally we have to leave a day or two early, kind of get out of our environment, try to find where things are and what to do," Oliver said. "Whereas when I'm at home, I know what to eat; I'm more familiar and more comfortable with that kind of thing."
The Aggie women are ranked No. 1 in the nation in the Division 1 indoor track and field rankings with the men being ranked No. 6. The Tex men are ranked No. 7 and Missouri is ranked No. 23.
"We try to educate our athletes to know that records or predictions are worth about as much as the paper they are written on, you actually have to go out there and get it done," Henry said.
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