The Warm-Up Lap: Outdoor Track & Field Weekend Outlook

NEW ORLEANS – While the official start of the 2014 collegiate outdoor track & field season came in mid-February for Division II and the beginning of March in Divisions I & III, for many teams around the nation the de facto beginning is this weekend.

A whopping 95 meets are on the schedule over the course of the next few days, which began yesterday most notably with the opening day of the four-day Texas Relays – this week’s USTFCCCA National Meet of the Week.

Austin, Texas, has been and will continue buzzing with collegiate (and also high school) track & field action as 14 top-25 Division I men’s teams and 13 more top-25 DI women’s squads – not to mention a handful of nationally ranked Division II and III programs – are among the hundreds of athletes competing.

For more information on the meet visit either the official Texas Relays headquarters or the USTFCCCA Infozone Meets this Weekend page.

Defending NCAA men’s decathlon national champ Johannes Hock of Texas and women’s heptathlon winner Lindsay Vollmer of Kansas have already been in action and more exceptional performances promise to follow.

The meet has produced 28 top-10 all-time collegiate performances on the current list, including marks from 2013 by active defending national champions Ole Miss’ Sam Kendricks (men’s pole vault), Julian Wruck of UCLA (men’s discus) and Bethany Firsick of South Dakota (women’s pole vault).

While the weather may be nice at Texas – as well as in North Carolina for the Raleigh Relays, in Arizona for the Arizona State Invitational and in California for the San Diego State Aztec Invitational – other areas around the country have been less fortunate. As of publication, at least five meets in the Northeast and Midwest have been cancelled.

Most nationally-ranked Division I teams are congregating at those aforementioned fair-weathered locations, but Division II and Division III teams are spread out amongst many separate meets.

A number of last season’s top Division II programs, including the defending champion Saint Augustine’s men and two of the top three women’s teams in Johnson C. Smith and Grand Valley State, will attend the Raleigh Relays, while several top Division III programs will compete at the Washington (Mo.) Invitational (Washington (Mo.), Illinois Wesleyan, Cedarville, Central (Iowa)) and the Tufts Snowflake Classic (MIT, Wheaton (Mass.), and Bates).

A more detailed breakdown of where top-10 teams will be competing – and how you can watch some of those meets live online and on television – can be found below.

USTFCCCA InfoZone: Broadcast Schedule

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Friday, March 28, 2014

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Top-Ranked Teams In Action