General Preview
Welcome welcome welcome to the SEC Indoor Track and Field Championships hosted by yours truly, your reigning conference champions, the Texas A&M Aggies. For 3 days, the best in the country will convene on West Campus at our beautiful Fasken Indoor Track. Gone is the regular season and now is the post season. It's ring season, it's championship season. It's time for the Aggies to shine. Let's get into it!
Indoor Track is a shortened season with about 2.5 months of competition. From the first week of January to mid February athletes and teams compete in regular season indoor meets. Indoors is very different compared to outdoors, not just in the limited events, but most importantly in the qualification process. While anyone is allowed to compete in conference, each conference sets a limit on the number of athletes each school can have participate (27 each gender in the SEC). However to qualify for nationals, one must have a top 16 ranking or season's best mark to advance to the national meet. Any best mark in any meet from the first meet till conference can qualify. While conference is where we usually see the best performances, some times athletes will qualify based on a big performance in the regular season. So we will be referencing the top 16 or bubble throughout the weekend.
The SEC is the premier conference in track and field. Olympians, national champions, all Americans, you can find it in the SEC. Aside from us, programs like Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, and South Carolina are some of the best in the nation. 5 SEC schools have seen a track and field national championship in the last 5 years. This year is no different. Whether it's the sprinting of the Georgia women or Arkansas and Auburn men, the jumping of Oklahoma, throwing of Ole Miss, 400 runners of Texas A&M, the distance prowess of many, it's elite competition in every event.
This year the Aggie men have an excellent shot at winning this meet again. However, Arkansas has reloaded. They went into the transfer portal and grabbed some elite sprinters and hurdlers along with some distance phenoms. There will be many head to heads between the two schools in many events. The 200 will feature Auhmad Robinson vs 3 strong Arkansas runners. The 800 will feature our own Peter Narumbe and Reese Sharman-Newell vs Rivaldo Marshall and Tyrice Taylor of Arkansas. The 60 Hurdles will feature Ja'Qualon Scott vs a trio of strong Arkansas hurdlers. Arkansas has more depth in the running events, but they hardly have anything in the field events aside from a strong high jumper and triple jumper. That's where we will need to do our damage. We need to grab 10 points apiece in the pole vault with Aleksandr Solovev and the Blake Harris in the heptathlon. Henry Zimmerman can get 8 in the weight throw. Then the relays will be extremely important. Arkansas has the fastest DMR and we have the second fastest, but will either team run their best lineups will be the question. Arkansas did not enter their top distance guys in the 5000 and didn't even enter anyone in the mile. Hopefully we can score some distance points. This will be a close race for the top. Tennessee men have an outside shot as do Georgia, Alabama, and Auburn.
On the women's side, we will be missing two of our best athletes and former SEC Champions in triple jumper Winny Bii and Heptathlete Sofia Yakushina. With Sofia's ability to possibly score in the long jump, that's 20+ points gone. 2 of our best athletes came into the year only with outdoor eligibility in sprinters Jasmine Montgomery and Adriana Tatum. We still have Camryn Dickson along with Anya Jackson in the sprints. We have a strong distance group in Debora Cherono (3000), Joyce Kemboi & Megan Roberts (3000, 5000), along with Elise Smoot and Sophia Bendet in the mile. Jaiya Covington will do her thing in the hurdles, but the conference is loaded at this event. We have two strong long jumpers in Machaeda Linton and Morgan Davis who are both projected to make nationals. It would be awesome for Lily Carlson to grab 10 points in the pole vault as well. However Arkansas has won on the women's side 13 straight seasons and Georgia is the reigning national champions. They are loaded across the board. Meanwhile we have many events where we won't see any points. We are very top heavy on the women's side side but not having 4 of our top girls will sting in a meet like this.
It's going to be a great extremely competitive weekend! Please head out there to support our Ags, I promise it's worth the price of admission. I will have previews for each days as well as recaps. I'll also comment on every race and field event! If you have any questions or comments please join in the conversation! I really hope our men can repeat as conference champions! While we're chasing a conference ring, indoors you're simultaneously fighting for top 16 individual spots in your event and for a top 12 relay nationally to qualify for nationals! This is a 3 day meet. Day 1 will have 2 final races, the 5000 and DMR, and 1 prelim races, the 200. Day 2 will have the rest of the prelim races aside the 200. With day 3 being all finals!
Let's go get some PR's, get some points, and go BTHO the sec!!!
