The Oregon women’s track and field team is finding itself with a new feature in its own home meet. With a new set of lights set to be introduced Friday night, the two-day Oregon Invitational takes place Friday and Saturday at Hayward Field.
Friday kicks off the events with the distance carnival. Along with a variety of field events, the Eugene track and field faithful will see Oregon’s track athletes compete under a new permanent lighting system. Action is tentatively set to start at 5:20 p.m., and then Saturday’s events run from around 2 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.
“As a team, we’re getting close to Pac-10s and reaching our goals in Pac-10s so this meet is pretty important,” sprinter Kavina Hall said. “It’s like a lead-in to it. We just want to come out and try to get some more regional qualifiers as well as get some good performances.”
Already, the Oregon women have 11 qualifying marks and have earned the qualifying mark for the 4×400 meter relay.
Oregon is expected to have its big-name athletes out in action. Rebekah Noble is planning to run the 800 and 4×400 Saturday. Rachel Yurkovich is throwing the javelin on Friday.
Thrower Britney Henry is coming off two weekends of performances that has her optimistic going into this weekend. Last weekend, Henry improved her season best in the women’s hammer by nearly two feet. She placed sixth overall and third among collegians with her best throw of 218-2.
The weekend prior, in the Pepsi Invitational, Henry made a 10-foot, 2-inch season best with a throw of 216-6. Although USC’s Eva Orban led the field with her throw of 218-2, Henry took confidence in her consistency.
“I’ve been very happy with that,” Henry said. “It’s one thing coming into this year that I really wanted to work on and it’s working out really well so I’m excited.”
Promising freshman Nicole Blood has secured regional qualifying times in the 1,500 and 5,000. Blood trailed teammate Noble by just seven seconds in finishing second in the 1,500 in 4 minutes, 29.05 seconds. Then, Blood returned later that afternoon and won the 5,000 going away in 16:39.89.
The Oregon athletes are going to have plenty of competition this weekend with more than 1,000 athletes from 42 college teams expected to participate.
Looking ahead, Oregon is likely to send distance groups to the Penn Relays from April 26-28. Oregon is also going to send about 30 athletes to the California Collegiate Challenge at the University of California from April 27-28.
Oregon then returns home for the Oregon Twilight on Saturday, May 5 before beginning the championship portion of the season with the Pacific-10 Conference Championship Saturday and Sunday, May 12-13 at Stanford University.
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