The Tennessee Track & Field team will travel to Florida and Stanford this weekend for their third and fourth track meets of the year. Both meets start April 3 and will conclude on the following day.
Tennessee will send distance runners redshirt sophomore Chelsea Blaase and redshirt junior Austin Whitelaw to Stanford. Director of track & field and cross country Beth Alford-Sullivan will lead the two athletes. Blaase, an indoor All-American, set the school record in the 10,000 meter last year at Stanford and Sullivan said is in a much better place this year and has a chance to break her own record. The meet at Stanford is considered to be one of the best distance venues in the country.
“Stanford has built a phenomenal distance carnival out there,” Alford-Sullivan said. “They have a full invitational, in fact, it has a high school component as well, but the 3,000 meter steeplechase, the 5,000 and 10,000 have for the last 20 years produced just phenomenal performances. You can’t beat Mother Nature in Palo Alto, California. The sun goes down, the wind goes down and the temperature is perfect and then you bring in great competition and great things happen.”
Eleven athletes will be sent to Florida highlighted by SEC Men’s Freshman Runner of the Year Christian Coleman. Coleman, who also earned first team indoor All-American honors in the 60 meters, will run in the 100 and 200 meters.
“He has had a good training cycle since the indoor NCAAs (indoor national championships),” Alford-Sullivan said. “Practices have been great, they have been looking fit, he looks very, very sharp.”
Alford-Sullivan said the 60 meters Coleman ran during the indoor season was new to him and he will be happy to be back in the 100 and 200 meters. She also acknowledged that Coleman had to adjust to the banked track used for the indoor season, adding that he will be more comfortable outdoors with the half-oval track. Sullivan said she is looking forward to Coleman getting his freshman outdoor season underway and seeing what he can do.
It will mostly be runners going to Florida, however, there will be some field athletes making the trip. Redshirt sophomore javelin thrower Maria Jimenez will open her outdoor season at Florida. Joining her will be junior jumper Wesley Edwards, freshman jumper Cidae’a Woods and sophomore jumper Brielyn Rogers.
Going from the indoor track to the outdoor track gives the athletes a sense of normalcy.
“The comfort level of the student-athlete is about the outdoor track,” Alford-Sullivan said. “That’s what they have come through the ranks running the outdoor season, not all athletes have had exposure to indoor so the transition back to outdoor is a level of comfort for them. There is the tradition events as well. The 100 versus the 60, the open 4 x 1 and 4 x 4 relays are much more of the tradition events outdoors. There is a lot of comfort as they go back into it and also our sport is just really defined by outdoor track and field.”
Following the events at Florida and Stanford this weekend, Tennessee will stay in Knoxville for the Tennessee Relays. The Tennessee Relays will be a three-day track meet starting Thursday, April 9.
Thursday will feature the Heptathlon and Decathlon. The track events will get under way on Friday and Saturday.
