Bulldog Tracksters Ready To Open Indoor Season At Washington
1/14/2012 12:00:00 AM | Track and Field
SPOKANE, Wash. - The Gonzaga University track teams will have a new and exciting challenge this 2012 season as the Bulldogs will use indoor track as a counter for NCAA purposes.
The Bulldogs inaugural indoor season begins Saturday with the University of Washington Preview at the Dempsey Indoor located on the Husky campus. The women will open with the 3,000 meters at 8 a.m., followed by the men at 8:15 a.m.
Obviously the opportunity to compete indoors brought a lot of excitement to head coach Pat Tyson.
"I think it's really significant," Tyson said. "When I joined the program four years ago, we had some semblance indoor racing but it was really unattached. We're becoming a real NCAA Division I program. We get to wear the Gonzaga jersey."
It also brought a lot of smiles to the student-athletes when he made the announcement to his team last year.
"I think they felt we really are becoming a legitimate program," Tyson said.
Tyson believes the purpose of having an indoor season is not really based on points, but more as an opportunity to give student-athletes to spin their wheels and provide an early competitive experience in preparation for the outdoor season.
"It's a long haul between the cross country season and that first outdoor meet in March," Tyson said. "Sometimes you kind of wonder why I am out here. There needs to be some test efforts to give a kid a bench mark of where they are. This indoor competition is going to be a really cool thing to give our athletes a little more edge."
Along with assistant coach Patty Ley, Tyson will have many familiar names returning for the track season.
"On the women's side, Lindsey Drake is really pretty edgy on the track. She's a pretty tough young lady. Obviously Emily Thomas, look what she did on the outdoor track, she broke a couple of records - 1,500 meters, 5,000, 10,000 - and it is going to be neat to see Lauren Bergam back in the lineup because she redshirted during the cross country season," Tyson said.
The women's newcomers are also impressive through the coaches' eyes as well.
"We have several young ladies that were under 5:10 in the 1,600 meters in high school such as Megan Batty out of Eastlake High School in Sammamish, Wash. She's a pretty tough young freshman," Tyson said.
On the men's side, Tyson expects a lot of positive results from returners Chris Boyle, Tate Kelly, Andrew Walker and Robert Walgren, but he expects his freshman class, led by Matthew Crichlow out of Meadowdale High School in Edmonds, Wash., to make an immediate impact.
"I think it is going to be great to see these kids run shorter distances and more pure track. It'll be the same faces but it will be fun to see how these freshmen adapt to the track part," Tyson said.
One of the challenges the Bulldogs will have this indoor season is training.
"It is a really good question because we have to do it a different way," Tyson said. "We don't have an indoor facility; we may even have an outdoor facility covered with snow. But when I look at the high school kids in Spokane, they will go over and run high school races at Dempsey and beat the Seattle kids. It's not a perfect world but I love the high school example because they get it done. I don't see any reason why Gonzaga can't get it done."
