Track meet held for high school, college teams

Most of the Missouri track and field team will be staying in Columbia during the university’s spring break, gearing up for the Missouri Relays at Audrey J. Walton stadium. The two-day open competition begins Friday and will attract athletes from high school and collegiate teams.

According to Missouri women’s distance coach Rebecca Wilmes, the meet’s format is nothing new.

“This is pretty typical in outdoor track,” she said. “If you go to the Florida Relays, it’s a mostly college meet with some high school teams mixed in. If you go to the Drake Relays, it’s a college meet with a considerable amount of high school stuff too.”

Howover, the Missouri meet’s relay format sets it apart from an ordinary invitational. Head coach Rick McGuire said that though most of the normal events will take place, the emphasis on relays makes a big difference.

“There is a full array of relay events, so it is much more so than in a normal track meet,” McGuire said.

A few of the relay events on the schedule are the 4x100 meters, the 4x800 meters, and the distance medley relay, which, according to McGuire, “make for a lot of fun.”Continued from page 1b

If winning is part of the fun, then the Tigers had a blast at the 2005 event when the both the men and women ran away with the 4x800 relay titles.

The fun atmosphere of the meet has contributed to its significant growth.

“It’s looking like we’re getting a bigger response by a lot,” McGuire said.

He said the meet has grown from hosting four to five collegiate teams when it first started to the 23 teams that participated in last year’s event. High school participation brought that number up to 52 teams.

The meet gives high school athletes a chance to show off their skills in front of watchful Missouri coaches. At the 2001 event, Kaela Rorvig, then an athlete at Hickman, and Chris Rohr who was with Lee’s Summit North, must have caught the Tigers’ attention, if they hadn’t already. This year marks the second outdoor season for each at Missouri.

“Any time high school students participate, we are always paying attention, for sure,” Wilmes said.

Hickman, Rock Bridge and Jefferson City high schools are meet regulars, but a high school program from Waukesha, Wis., will also compete. Chris Ramsey, the coach of Waukesha West High School’s girls track and cross country teams, has special ties to Missouri. Three of the schools former athletes, including his daughters Serena and Emily Ramsey, are currently competing for the Tigers.

While most of the Tigers will be competing in Columbia this weekend, several distance runners will have the opportunity to travel to Palo Alto, California over spring break to compete at the Stanford Invitational. Wilmes said that those competing at Stanford will get a chance to run the 5,000- or 10,000-meter races in nice weather. She said these distance events are not held often.

“They only run the 10,000 maybe once before the conference meet, so its not like you have multiple times to go try,” Wilmes said.

The number of relay meets on the schedule is also slim. The Drake Relays are the only other event of this kind the Tigers are planning to attend.