Track Heads To UH
1/27/2012 8:55:00 AM | Track & Field, Women's Track & Field
The team started the season two weeks ago in College Station at the Texas A&M Team Invitational and hopes to build on an opening meet that saw 11 top eight finishes.
With only 15 seniors combined on the men's and women's rosters, this year's Kats will feature a lot of young and budding talent. Talent, however, that looks to gain experience competing in a different kind of environment: an indoor facility with a 200 meter track.
"Most of our kids coming into college have never competed indoors. Down south there's not usually a lot of need for an indoor track because the weather's so good," said Head Coach Dave Self. "Right now you just want them to compete hard. With indoor you usually either love it or hate it, but in the end it's still a track."
In addition to the difference in the size of the track there are also different kinds of indoor tracks. At Texas A&M the track is a banked (inclined on the sides), but the track at the University of Houston is flat.
"You can usually run faster on a banked track," said Self. "But our conference meet is on a flat 200 meter track so we're going to do the rest of our events on that type of surface."
The Kats will face talented competition in the meet from a field of 13 collegiate teams. These include conference opponents Stephen F. Austin, Texas State, and UTSA as well as Grambling, host Houston, Houston Baptist, North Texas, Prairie View A&M, Rice, Southern-Baton Rouge, Texas (women), and Texas Southern.
