With the NCAA championship preliminaries coming up in a little over a week and the official list of scratches and entries being released yesterday, I’m happy to be able to dig into the specifics of exactly how many real competitors we may have in our ranks. This will also be revealing with respect to what type of talent we may have coming up to replace guys like Lawson and Washington.
First, lots of calculations have to be done about how our coaches run these athletes. We have athletes with excellent times, like Taylor Ellis-Watson regional #2 at 200m and Cale Wallace regional number six at 1500m, who will not contest those competitions in favor of focusing on other races that the coaches value more. There are a number of reasons that go into these calculations and every coach must go through and decide who must scratch. We will have our fair share of advantages handed to us by coaches who must scratch very good athletes that might put us out of scoring position. The Longhorns and the Aggies have had to scratch three sprint entries that very well could have produced big points for them and Texas State scratched one of Lawson’s biggest competitors. Second, the flip side of the coin is that we will see the return of some athletes, most notably Demi Payne coming back from a hand injury after snapping a pole, who will be Alexis Meeks’ chief competition, both in preliminary and championship meets.
Arkansas has qualified the most athletes to prelims for both men's and women's squads. The men have 41 entries going to Lawrence, while the women will have 33 entries. Track and field individual events each have 48 participants while relay events have 24. The top 12 in each event advance to the championship out of each preliminary. 18 of the men’s entries fall within the top 12. 20 of the female entries are top 12. This kind of calculation certainly doesn’t mean this will be how many scoring opportunities we have at the next level. I think each number is probably high. See links below.
First, lots of calculations have to be done about how our coaches run these athletes. We have athletes with excellent times, like Taylor Ellis-Watson regional #2 at 200m and Cale Wallace regional number six at 1500m, who will not contest those competitions in favor of focusing on other races that the coaches value more. There are a number of reasons that go into these calculations and every coach must go through and decide who must scratch. We will have our fair share of advantages handed to us by coaches who must scratch very good athletes that might put us out of scoring position. The Longhorns and the Aggies have had to scratch three sprint entries that very well could have produced big points for them and Texas State scratched one of Lawson’s biggest competitors. Second, the flip side of the coin is that we will see the return of some athletes, most notably Demi Payne coming back from a hand injury after snapping a pole, who will be Alexis Meeks’ chief competition, both in preliminary and championship meets.
Arkansas has qualified the most athletes to prelims for both men's and women's squads. The men have 41 entries going to Lawrence, while the women will have 33 entries. Track and field individual events each have 48 participants while relay events have 24. The top 12 in each event advance to the championship out of each preliminary. 18 of the men’s entries fall within the top 12. 20 of the female entries are top 12. This kind of calculation certainly doesn’t mean this will be how many scoring opportunities we have at the next level. I think each number is probably high. See links below.
