Four members of the East Tennessee State University (ETSU) track and field team will participate in the Wake Forest Invitational on April 16 and 17 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
This event is significant as it provides an opportunity for select ETSU athletes to improve their standings ahead of the upcoming Catamount Classic and Southern Conference (SoCon) Outdoor Championships. The rest of the team is currently preparing for these key competitions.
For the men’s squad, one athlete will compete in the 800-meter run. He currently holds fourth place in the SoCon with a best time of 1:51.22, which is less than four seconds behind the conference leader.
On the women’s side, one runner enters the 800-meter run ranked eighth in SoCon with a best time of 2:14.79. Another competitor, who is third in SoCon for the 3000-meter steeplechase at 10:44.52, will race that event again this week. She also ranks forty-third in the NCAA East Region for this event, making her a potential qualifier for NCAA regionals—the only Buccaneer currently inside an event’s top forty-eight regional cutoff.
A third female athlete will participate in both Friday’s 400-meter and 200-meter sprints as she aims to regain first place on SoCon leaderboards. She is second in both events—just six hundredths off first place in the 200 meters (24.29 seconds) and two tenths behind first place in the 400 meters (55.11). Earlier this month at VertKlasse Meeting, she set a leading SoCon time of eleven point fifty-five seconds for one hundred meters.
The full ETSU squad returns next weekend at Cullowhee’s Catamount Classic before heading into their final scheduled meet prior to competing at this year’s Southern Conference Outdoor Championships.
