Indoor Track and Field season is here!

Jan 30, 2023 - 9:32 PM

This has been a weird winter/early spring season for Red Raider fans. We’ve become accustomed to seeing the Men’s Basketball team have success, but we’ve been let down in that department.

Another sport that has high expectations is our indoor track teams, both the men and women. Each finished within the top 20 at the NCAA Championships last year, and they’re both looking to make a push towards the top as we get things started.

Both teams are ranked within the top 10 to start the year, with the men’s side second in the country behind Stanford.

For the Men’s side, we’ve had three meets so far and have had the top guys show out early on in the season. Zach Bradford has one of the best Pole Vaulting heights in the country as he reached 5.76m mark at the recent Texas Tech Open. He’s someone we’re going to have to keep an eye on as he’ll likely be competing for that top spot both indoor and outdoor.

Another guy that I was impressed with was Courtney Lindsey. He ran an impressive 20.41 at the TTU Corky Classic a few weeks ago which was the best in the country heading into last Monday. He will be looking to improve and hopefully make it out of the preliminary rounds of the indoor Championship this season after just barely missing out last year.

And probably the most talked about guy is the transfer from Maryland Caleb Dean. He competes in the 60m sprints as well as the hurdles and has a top-9 time for both events in the country so far this season.

He also starts off on the 4x400m that is just milliseconds off of the top time in the country. The 4x400 also consists of Lindsey, Shaemar Uter and Nylo Clarke and is easily the most exciting event in track and field so having a team that is one of the best in the country is a bonus.

Marco Vilca is the main man going into his Junior season for the mid-distance group and has an opportunity to climb up those Big-12 ranks and get into the national spotlight this season.

They guy that everyone would like to see get back to his form from last year is Jacolby Shelton, who won the Big 12 Indoor Championship in both the 60m and 200m. Lindsey seems to be pacing the team early on, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Shelton creep up those rankings.

As for the Women’s side, Rosemary Chukwuma has top-five time in both the 60m and 200m so far this season. She’s the returning Big-12 indoor champ for the 60m sprint and just had a PR in the Texas Tech Open with a 7.09 time. She’s going to be a threat at that event as well as the 200m and could help Tech move up the rankings on her own.

Luckily she has some pretty solid teammates as Demisha Roswell who has a top four time so far in the 60m Hurdles which seems to be her primary focus this season after doing a multitude of events last year. She finished third last year in the Big-12 Indoor Championships and is picking up where she left off and is going to be a problem on the national scale.

I’ll be shifting some of my focus to Track and Field and will try to give weekly updates on how the teams are doing. There’s plenty of other talented athletes that I could’ve mentioned but they’ll surely be talked about as the competitions start to heat up and we see who’s really going to help these two teams finish top-5 in the country.