ISU Bengal

Issue date: 2/27/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Cody Fowers Just after the gun went off, the men's team fights for position. L to R: Saheed Khan ( 244), John Ricardi (245), and Tysun Rickards.

As an athlete on the ISU track and field team, there are many "inside the scene" activities that happen during a meet. This weekend we competed in the last chance to qualify for the Big Sky Conference competition. The conference will be held next weekend. Months of training has begun to pay off for many of the athletes who have been hitting personal best marks.

The preparation for the meet started for some of the women athletes before sunrise. The ISU-owned Chevy Yukons left the Holt Arena parking lot at 6 a.m. Groggy and half asleep, the women's long jump, high jump, and pole vault athletes rolled into Weber State University's territory at 8 a.m. There was no time to waste as the competition started at 9 a.m.- not a second later. This left only 40 minutes to warm up, stretch and find marks. The rest of the team followed only two hours behind.

The look of determination is priceless on the faces of the athletes concentrating on their upcoming events. For the athletes, every second and centimeter counts. For the sprinters and runners, there are no second chances. There is one race to prove that you've earned a spot in the competition.

Mentally, it takes focus to come back from a bad mark. In the triple jump, Erin Bell scratched two jumps before finally getting a legitimate mark. She exclaimed, "It wasn't my best jump, but I had to get a mark." Her jump was good enough for second place after finals at 36 feet, 0.75 inches.

At the end of the day, memories are made, critical marks are hit and records are broken. Cassie Merkley ran a preliminary time of 8.08 seconds and then took first place in the finals when she ran a time of 7.94 in the 55-meter hurdles. That was only five hundredths of a second faster than her previous school record time of 7.99, which she set in 2007. To put into perspective of those mere hundredths of a second, Merkley is just eight hundreds of a second short of an automatic NCAA National Qualifying mark. Eight hundredths of a second would win her a chance for nationals.

Freshman Thomas Theil did not break a record, but he did break a pole during the men's pole vault competition. After a huge personal best and jumping the Big Sky Qualifying mark at 15 feet, 6.25 inches, the look on his face showed he was stoked. At his second attempt at 16-06.50, his pole snapped. "It's like slamming a baseball bat against a wall." During my next attempt my hands were shaking so bad, I could barely hang on to the pole."

Thiel was able to place the potentially fatal experience in the back of his head and attempt two more jumps at 16-06.50.

Another priceless moment came during the men's 3000-meter run, when competitors circle the 200 meter track 15 times. The two Bengals battled for position during the first 13 laps until Saheed Kahn passed John Ricardi. He finished nearly five seconds ahead of his teammate with the firstplace time of 8 minutes 38.87 seconds.

Anticipation will grow until the athletes can finally fight for a Big Sky title this weekend. The battle will begin Feb. 29 and end March 1 at Holt Arena.

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