By: by Emily Diekelmann
CLEMSON, S.C. - Beginning the 2011 portion of their indoor season, the men’s track and field squad is headed to Clemson to participate in the Clemson Invitational Friday and Saturday. After starting their season at the Eastern Illinois Early Bird Invitational, the team will get a chance to start the New Year off right.
Participating against 19 other teams, the team will get to see how they size up against competition from all over Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and as far away as Ohio. The Owls will feel right at home as local rivals Georgia Tech and Georgia State will also be competing this weekend. Having some different distances thrown in for the meet this weekend, head track and field coach Andy Eggerth is excited to see how the squad reacts to the adversity.
“The meet at Clemson is a little different because we will be racing some distances that are only offered in meets once or twice a year, like the 300m and 500m races,” Eggerth said. “This is a good way to evaluate the athletes conditioning levels following the Christmas break because when they’re not familiar with the race they don’t know exactly what to expect which means that they just go out and run hard giving sometimes a more true indication of their abilities.”
A full weekend is planned with 18 events for the men including the rare 300 and 500m races. During the Early Bird Invitational Dec. 11, Tyler Riberdy, Jemir Martinez, Joshua James, Brian Graham and Tyler Crow all made new personal records in their respective events. Kendall Parks broke a previous school record in the 60m high hurdles previously set be Tremaine Grant. His time of 8.07 beat Grant's by five hundreths of a second.
This weekend is one of two visits that the team will make to Clemson during the indoor season. Their next trip will be in two weeks for the Clemson Games Jan 28-29. The meet begins Friday Jan. 7 at 5 P.M. with the 60m hurdles prelims then will conclude Saturday with the pole vault and 4x4 relay.
