Montana State Begins Indoor Track & Field Season Saturday in Worthington Arena

Saturday, December 1

BOZEMAN

11 a.m.

Montana State University

Bobcat Preview

Photo by: R. Dean Hendrickson

Montana State Begins Indoor Track & Field Season Saturday in Worthington Arena

11/28/2018 12:17:00 PM | Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field

Meet Information Performance List

The Montana State track and field teams will get an early indicator of where they’re at heading into the chunk of their indoor season when they host the Bobcat Preview on Saturday

By: Andrew Pedersen

The Montana State track and field teams will get an early indicator of where they're at heading into the chunk of their indoor season when they host the Bobcat Preview on Saturday, Dec. 1, inside the confines of Worthington Arena. The first field event is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., followed by the start of track events at 12 p.m.

The Bobcats are slated to host a total of six events during the course of the indoor season, as well travel for one meet, prior to the conference championships. MSU will compete in four meets during January, with three taking place in Bozeman. The Bobcats close out their regular season with home meets on Feb. 8 and Feb. 15 before the Big Sky Championships which run from Feb. 21-23.

Montana State Director of Track and Field Lyle Weese noted the Bobcat Preview is an event the Bobcats look forward to with so many of the team's student-athletes out of competition since last spring.

"Having this be an official meet has really added a lot to our fall training and our excitement going into the indoor season," Weese said. "The full part of the season happens in January and February, but this meet happening in December gets everybody into the mindset of either 'I'm right on schedule or I need to pick it up.' It's a good check point to see where everyone is at.

"For the non-distance runners, there's a lot of excitement going into this meet because they've been training all summer and fall. This is a good opportunity to show off their hard work and where they're at."

Montana State welcomes Carroll College, Montana, MSU Billings and several runners from Northern Arizona as opposition to the meet on Saturday. The Bobcat Preview will feature 174 athletes competing in 14 different events.

MSU returns 10 student-athletes on the men's side and nine on the women's squad that completed program all-time top 10 performances a year ago. The Bobcat men that made top 10 marks a year ago includes Jadin Casey, Parker Walton, Mitch Horning, Cameron Carroll, Chris Bianchini, Ty Mogan, Caleb Neth, Noah Martin, Alec Nehring and Wyatt Thompson-Siporen. The MSU women's team's contingent includes Kelsi Lasota, Caroline Hardin, McKenna Ramsay, Kendra Larson, Trisha Carlson, Anna French, Isabella Calabrese, Truanne Roginske and Alex Hellenberg.

Despite the Bobcats not earning an individual gold medal performance at the 2018 Big Sky Indoor Championships, several student-athletes return that were all-conference honorees.

Thompson-Siporen (pole vault) and Martin (heptathlon) stood on the podium in the jumps events for the men, while Carroll (800) and Nehring (shot put) finished in the top three of their respective events. Christopher Lange, Riley Collins and Sam Bloom helped MSU pick up six points with a third-place finish at the conference meet in the distance medley relay. Lasota and Layne Oliver each stood on the Big Sky podium in the 3,000-meter run and mile, respectively, to help lead the women's squad at last year's Big Sky Championship. Carlson, Hailey Phillips and Lexi Kyro were part of MSU's distance medley relay squad that took third at the conference meet.
The Bobcat Preview is the first meet of the indoor season at Worthington Arena, with the Big Sky Championships serving as the MSU finale inside Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. The conference meet, which is set to run for three days in February, will be the ninth edition that takes place in the Bobcats' home venue. Montana State previously hosted in 2016.

"It's always exciting to host a conference championship," Weese said. "We typically have scored better than we look on paper when we host a meet, whether it's indoor or outdoor. Our team goes out and does better than expected. We're not redshirting or holding people back, we're going into this indoor season to do as really well as we can and see how this shakes out."