Montana State University
Spokane Sports Showcase
Track and Field Kickstarts Indoor Season in Spokane on Friday
1/11/2024 12:17:00 PM | Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field
Spokane Sports Showcase at The Podium will be an opportunity for the Bobcats to get indoor season in full swing competing against several Pac-12 and Mountain West teams
BOZEMAN, Mont. -- After more than a month-long break, the Montana State track and field teams return to action on Friday, competing at the Spokane Sports Showcase at The Podium in Spokane, Washington.
The Cats opened their season on Dec. 7 at the Bobcat PReview in Bozeman, but now toe the starting line for the semester-long sprint that will take them through the indoor season to outdoor season in the spring.
"This meet will have a lot of high-quality competitors in a lot of different events," said Dale Kennedy Director of Track and Field Lyle Weese. "It'll be good for our team to go up against that level of competition. It will also be good to see where everyone is at coming off the winter break. For the most part, it's kind of a starting point to our indoor season as we build towards indoor conference championships and then moving on to outdoors."
Friday's meet gets underway at 10 a.m. PT/11 a.m. MT with both the women's weight throw and the women's 60-meters. The final event is the men's 4x400 meter relay, scheduled for 3:25 p.m. PT/4:25 p.m. MT. A full schedule of events can be found here.
Live results are available on athletictiming.net. Track events will also be streamed on RunnerSpace, available to watch with a subscription to RunnerSpace +PLUS.
The Spokane Sports Showcase is put on by the Spokane Sports Commision and is hosted at The Podium, one of the premier indoor track and field facilities in the country.
The Podium, which has a 6-lane, 200-meter hydraulically banked track, will be the site of the 2024 Big Sky Indoor Track and Field Championships, hosted by Eastern Washington.
"It is probably more important this year that we get over to Spokane on that track and on those field event venues, because the conference meet is there," Weese said. "We'll have the opportunity to see the facility on Friday and then again four weeks after that. Those two opportunities will be great for our team to get on the track and get on the field event venues in preparation for our indoor conference championships."
On Friday, the Cats will be one of two Big Sky programs participating in the meet at nearly full strength, along with Idaho, with Eastern Washington sending a contingent of athletes. Also competing will be Pac-12 programs Washington State, Southern California, and Stanford, along with Mountain West teams like Fresno State, Hawaii, San Jose State, and UNLV. Gonzaga and Santa Clara, out of the West Coast Conference, will also field teams.
"Overall, generally we're looking to be in the range that we were performing at the December meet," Weese said. "If we're anywhere near that, that will be a good starting point for the rest of the indoor season. Not everyone has facilities to train on over the break, so everything is kind of on-your-own for a month—in some ways we're kind of starting over a little bit, but hopefully we're not starting over too much."
In the Bobcats' season opener on Dec. 7 at Worthington Arena, Ben Perrin broke the program's indoor 5,000-meter record, crossing the line in a converted time of 13:29.16 to beat the record set by Duncan Hamilton last year by more than five seconds. The mark also broke the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse Facility record, previously set by Tyler Day of Northern Arizona in 2018 (13:31.36).
Perrin was named Big Sky Male Track Athlete of the Week for his performance, and was joined by teammate Hailey Coey, who was named Big Sky Female Field Athlete of the Week for her marks in the long and triple jump at the Bobcat PReview.
Coey posted a leap of 5.96m (19-06.75), to push her into the No. 4 spot all-time in the long jump indoors. Coey turned in back-to-back jumps of over 5.95m on her first two tries of the season, going 5.95m on her first attempt and 5.96m on her second jump.
Later on in the evening, Coey followed up that performance with a 12.00m (39-04.5) mark in the triple jump, cementing her place at the No. 3 spot in the top-10 list.
In the Preseason Big Sky Coaches' Poll, Montana State was picked to finish second on the women's side and third on the men's side. The Cats return a lot of firepower from a squad that had the men finish in a tight third place behind Northern Arizona and Idaho, and the women finish runner-up behind the Lumberjacks. Last season, four men's indoor program records fell in addition to three women's indoor records.
"With things starting in early January, we'll be going through June," Weese said. "It's an exciting time of the year—it was nice to have the meet in December, but coming off the break this really feels more like we're into indoor season and into track and field for the next six months."
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