Two Meets Scheduled for Bobcat Track and Field This Week

Friday, February 10

BOZEMAN

3:30 p.m.

Montana State University

Bobcat Performance Meet

Caroline Hawkes (right)

Photo by: Bobcat Creative Services

Two Meets Scheduled for Bobcat Track and Field This Week

2/9/2023 1:36:00 PM | Men's Track and Field, Women's Track and Field

Bobcat Performance Meet Schedule Bobcat Performance Meet Program Husky Classic Heat Sheets Husky Classic Schedule

The Montana State Track and Field team hosts its penultimate home meet on Friday while the distance crew competes at the Husky Classic this weekend.

BOZEMAN, Montana – The Montana State Track and Field team returns to action this week at two different meets — including the Bobcat Performance meet, held in Worthington Arena at 3:30 p.m. on Friday.

Field events begin with the men's and women's weight throw, plus the men's high jump at 3:30 p.m., then the women's 60-meter hurdles prelims start the track action at 5 p.m. The meet will not be live streamed, but links to live results will be uploaded to the men's and women's track team's schedule pages at msubobcats.com on the morning of the meet.

Aside from Montana State, only Idaho State and Montana will compete at the Bobcat Performance meet, along with a handful of unattached individuals. Friday's meet marks the penultimate indoor home track and field meet of the year. Next week's Big Sky Tuner on Feb. 17 will serve as the regular-season finale before the Bobcats head to Moscow, Idaho for the Big Sky Indoor Track and Field Championships on Feb. 23-25.

The Bobcats are coming off a solid showing at the WSU Open & Combined Events meet last weekend in Spokane, Wash. Caroline Hawkes (women's 200-meters), Duncan Hamilton (men's 800 meters), Levi Taylor (men's mile), Elena Carter (women's 60-meters) and Stryder Todd-Fields (men's 60-meters) set new all-time top-10 marks in their respective events, plus three Bobcats picked up individual wins at The Podium.

FROM THE HEAT SHEET

Three-time Big Sky Indoor Field Athlete of the Week Lucy Corbett's high jump will be the marquee event on Friday. Corbett ranks ninth in Division I and has cleared the six-foot bar twice this season.
Speaking of Big Sky leaders, jumper/hurdler Elena Carter will focus on the long jump on Friday in an effort to improve her conference-leading mark of 5.87m (19-3.25).
True freshman Stryder Todd-Fields will aim to lower his team-best time of 6.93 seconds in the 60-meter dash. Todd-Fields ranks seventh in the Big Sky Conference and fourth amongst true freshmen in the event. Xavier Simpson (6.97 seconds) and Noah Barbery (6.99 seconds) round out the top four times on the heat sheet.
On the women's side, Macy White comes in with the fastest 60-meter dash time with the 7.53 she ran at the WSU Open last weekend. She ranks fourth in the Big Sky in the event.
True freshman Caroline Hawkes is the person to beat in the women's 400 meters; her 56.24-second time at the Bobcat Challenge ranks fifth in the conference and first amongst all freshmen.
Over in the circle, Jordan Fink has the top mark in the shot put, while Leah Klein is second on the heat sheet in both the shot put and the weight throw. The senior duo has put together a solid season so far, with Klein throwing the sixth-best mark at MSU (18.19m/59-8.25) and Fink throwing indoor personal bests in the shot put and moving up to number three in the Big Sky Conference.
For the men's throwers, Matt Furdyk will go for his fifth win on the season in the weight throw. Furdyk, who ranks second in the Big Sky and fourth in MSU history, threw his lifetime best mark of 19.69m (64-7.25) in Worthington Arena to start the season; since then, he has never placed below third in the weight throw this year.

DISTANCE RUNNERS TOE THE LINE IN SEATTLE

Meanwhile out west, a group of Montana State distance runners will compete at the University of Washington's Husky Classic, which starts Friday at 3:45 p.m. MT and ends on Saturday with Chris Bianchini's 800 meters at 3:10 p.m. MT.

Held at sea level and with over 40 Division I schools and 12 Division II schools represented in the distance events, the Husky Classic marks one of the last, best opportunities to record fast times. The Bobcats will send 13 distance runners to the meet.

With over 130 entries, the women's 3,000 meters is one of the biggest events of the Husky Classic. Kendra Lusk and Ava Weems will be the first Bobcats to toe the line in the first heat of the 3,000 meters, which is scheduled to start at 3:45 p.m. MT. Two heats later, the Big Sky Conference's fastest true freshman Lindsey Paulson will run the third heat of the 3,000 meters against six runners from Power-5 schools and Missoula native Abby Kendrick, who now runs for Boise State. Mya Dube rounds out the Bobcat runners in heat five of seven. Dube has the fifth-fastest time in the conference with the 9:30.90 she ran at the Bobcat Challenge.

Levi Taylor and Owen Smith will run the men's 3,000 meters. Taylor has put together a solid indoor season so far, having PRed in the mile (4:04.38), the 3K (8:03.43) and the 5,000 meters (14:11.06) — all of which are top-10 all-time marks at MSU. Running his first indoor season, Smith has set benchmarks of 8:27.01 in the 3K, 4:12.40 in the mile and 1:57.37 in the 800 meters. Taylor will run in heat five and Smith will run in heat one.

Alex Moore, who ran a sub-17 minute 5K for the first time indoors this year, leads off the action in the women's 5,000 meters at 6:30 p.m. MT. Then at 7:05 p.m., Cooper West is scheduled to run in his first indoor 5K of 2023 in the first of four heats.

Three Bobcats made it into the invitational heats of the indoor 5,000 meters. MSU school record holder Camila Noe is MSU's lone representative in the women's 5,000 meters, which is scheduled for 8:25 p.m. MT. Making her season debut in the 5K this weekend, Noe's heat features not only four runners with top-40 indoor 5K times in Division I, but also three cross country All-Americans from this past fall.

For the men, Matthew Richtman and Ben Perrin face off against 16 runners in the men's invitational 5,000 meters. Richtman currently ranks 45th in Division I with a seed time of 13:51.07 — his lifetime personal-best ran at the Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener last December. Other runners with top-50 5K times in Division I include Colorado's Charlie Sweeney (13:45.68, 37th) and Boise State's Ahmed Ibrahim (13:48.29, 40th), plus D2 All-American Cole Nash of Alaska Anchorage will also bolster the field. Perrin, who ranks second in MSU history with a time of 13:39.56, is making his season-debut in the event.

Wrapping up Friday's action in the invitational heat of the men's 3,000 meters, Duncan Hamilton comes in with the fastest time on the heat sheet with the 7:43.28 he ran at altitude at the Bobcat Challenge three weeks ago. Hamilton ranks fifth in Division I; his stiffest competition will be Oklahoma State's duo of Fouad Messaoudi (7:44.26, 8th in Division I) and Ryan Schoppe, Arkansas' Lexington Hilton (7:49.84, 13th-DI) and Gonzaga's Wil Smith (7:55.98, 43rd-DI).

MSU's lone event on Saturday is Chris Bianchini's heat of the 800-meter dash, which is scheduled to start at around 3:10 p.m. MT. The super-senior ran his indoor-personal best time of 1:49.94 at the Bobcat Challenge and he ranks second in the Big Sky behind Idaho's Lorenz Hermann. Bianchini is the fourth-fastest indoor 800-meter runner of all time at MSU, yet close competition in his heat could help bring him closer to Patrick Casey's school record of 1:47.08.