With their first track meet at Embry- Riddle, a future conference foe, under its belt, the UT women’s track team is looking ahead and already planning for nationals.
“Our goal is to get a couple of girls to nationals, which will be hosted in Michigan this year,” Coach Jarrett Slaven said.
One of the women he believes will qualify is sophomore management major Chantalle Blundell. Slaven anticipates Blundell will qualify in the 3000-meter steeplechase. “I will also run the 5k and a few 1500m races,” Blundell said.
However, before teammates can think about nationals in May, they have 10 more meets, invitationals and relays to ready themselves. Three of the meets, two at the University of South Florida and one at Florida State University, are primarily against Division 1 schools.
“In track, we run against all D1 schools,” Slaven said. “We’re one of the very few Division 2 schools to have a track on campus, which is wonderful. We’re very fortunate. In track, in Division 1, we actually had a number of girls, especially the distance girls, that would compete with them and beat them on occasion. The sprinters did well, as expected. When we go to USF, we’re running against all D1 programs, with the exception of us and a few other D2 schools that go there.”
At the meets, UT competes in all events except for field events.
“Our track does not have field facilities and that’s quite expensive to put in those facilities. But we’re happy with what we have and we do have hurdles which we added two years ago. So we have all sprint events, all distance events and now we have hurdles,” Slaven said.
Thankfully, Slaven and his team didn’t face any hurdles in adding this new event. “We had a couple of runners that came to me and said, ‘I used to be a hurdler. I’d like to run the hurdles.’ So, we kind of added that because it’s a running event and we thought, why not? It helps us score points if we have a hurdler that can be in the mix,” Slaven said.
As for adding a new school to our conference, Slaven said it’s a good thing. “They have excellent runners on both the men’s and women’s side. Which, we always look for good competitive schools. So that’s going to be interesting.”
With a team consisting of athletes with a wide range of ages and events, the team is hopeful for a few wins and a chance at nationals.
“We have a lot of young and talented athletes and our seniors are looking really strong so this season should be a good one,” Blundell said. “Hopefully some school records will be broken and some runners qualify for nationals.”
Layla Souchet can be reached at layla.souchet@spartans.ut.edu.