Cougars Head North for Weekend Meet
PROVO -- BYU will send its men's and women's track teams to Pocatello, Idaho this weekend to compete in the Mountain States Games. The meet, to be held at Holt Arena on the campus of Idaho State University, will feature 600-700 of the best track & field athletes in the country. Two-time NCAA champion Leonard Myles-Mills (100-meters), a former Cougar, will be one of the headliners at the event which will also include numerous conference champions and NCAA finalists and many more elite national and regional competitors. Other teams competing in the meet will be ISU, Utah State, Utah, Southern Utah, Weber State, Utah Valley State College, Ricks College, Boise State, Montana State and the Greater Boise Running Club.
This year's Games will feature several nationally ranked athletes competing in the field events. Maureen Griffen, the American Junior record holder in the hammer throw, broke the Holt Arena and Big Sky Conference records in the weight throw last week, and he holds the third-longest throw in the nation. BYU's Jim Roberts, an All-American in the shot put, is coming off a first-place finish at last week's Air Force Invitational. Roberts recorded the second-best throw of his career, and the third-best throw in the nation this year, with a toss of 65'04.25", a full three feet farther than the NCAA automatic qualifying standard.
Weber State's Joel Atwater and ISU's Emry Carr will headline a men's distance lineup that will feature some of the top regional talent. Atwater and Carr produced the #5 and #6 marks in the nation in the mile last week, and Carr owns the third-fastest collegiate time in the 5,000-meters this season. BYU will bring in four of the nation's best female distance runners with Elizabeth Jackson, Tara Northcutt, Courtney Meldrum and Sharolyn Shields-Thayer. Jackson (16:29.27) and Northcutt(16:35.62) both recorded NCAA provisional times in the 5,000 last week in Minnesota, while Meldrum ran a provisional time of 9:37.55 in the 3,000-meters and Shields-Thayer ran 4:48.14 in the mile, also a provisional mark.
The action will begin Friday at noon with the men's and women's pentathlon, then preliminary rounds of the running events will follow at 5:30. Start time Saturday will be 9:00 a.m., with the continuation of the field and running events. The final event of the day, the 4z400-meter relay is scheduled for 3:35 p.m.
