Track and Field Opens 2017 in Nebraska

Friday, January 13

Lincoln, Neb.

Oklahoma State University

Holiday Inn Invite

Cole Verble at the 2015 Big 12 Indoor Championships

Heptathlete Cole Verble

January 12, 2017 | Cowboy Cross Country & Track, Cowgirl Cross Country & Track

MEET NOTES

The Basics
The Oklahoma State track and field teams return to action at the Holiday Inn Invite in the Cornhusker State after a month away from competition.
The Cowboys and Cowgirls will compete against Nebraska, UMKC, Drake University and Oklahoma Christian among others in Lincoln.

Follow the Meet
To follow the competition, live results will be available on the Nebraska athletics website, huskers.com.
OSU's results and a full recap of the event for the Pokes will be available on okstate.com following the completion of both days of competition.

Broadcast
The 2017 Holiday Inn Invite will not be televised or streamed online.

Meet Format/Schedule - All Times CT
The 2017 Holiday Inn Invite begins Friday at 4 p.m. with the qualifying rounds of the men's and women's 60-meter hurdles.
The long jump and pole vault are the first field events, scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. as well.
Running events will continue subsequently until the men's 5,000-meter run closes the first day of competition at 8:15 p.m.
Day two starts up earlier at noon with the preliminary (semifinal), runnings of the 60-meter hurdles.
A seeded women's pole vault and men's triple jump start the field events off at noon, and the seeded men's pole vault closes field competition.
The final event on the track will be the men's 4X400-meter relay at 4:40 p.m.
A complete tentative schedule of events is available on huskers.com.

Last Time Out
OSU opened the 2016-17 indoor season at the K-State Winter Invitational on Dec. 10, competing with Kansas State, Missouri – Kansas City, Nebraska – Omaha, and a few athletes from Ft. Hays State and Texas-Wesleyan.
A conference runner-up a season ago, Jacob Fincham-Dukes opened his sophomore campaign with a win the long jump. The British international leapt 7.41m/24-3.75 feet to take the invitational title.
Fincham-Dukes was the first of the five event winners for OSU at the meet.
Bradley Johnson out-kicked the competition to win the 600-yard run in 1:12.73, with Tyler Jackson and Brandon Singleton taking second and third, respectively.
OSU swept the 600-yard titles with Ambra Wesley winning the women's race as well. She finished in 1:26.66 and was followed by Danielle Coleman in third and Amira Coleman in fifth.
The Cowgirls went one-two in the women's shot put. Senior Katie Kehl won the event launching the shot 14.11m/46-3.50, and true freshman Jocelen Ruth's throw of 13.42m/44-0.50 got her second place. Ruth opened the day by putting herself into the Cowgirl record book in the weight throw with a mark of 15.80m/51-10.00, the eighth-best mark in school history.
The freshmen performed well in their OSU debuts led by Ruth, Fenja Krohn and Kira White.
Krohn impressed in the high jump when she finished tied for second with the third-best mark in the event in Cowgirl history. She cleared 1.68m/5-6.00 feet to give OSU its best high jump mark indoors since 2014.
In the 60 meters, White dashed her way to a runner-up finish and the fourth-best time in school history with a 7.75. Later in the day, White tested her range in the 300 and won her heat, finishing eighth overall.
OSU's 4X400-meter relay teams had successful season debuts.
The Cowboys won and the Cowgirls took second in the final events of the meet.
The men's quartet of Brandon Singleton, Tanner Green, Anthony Grogan Jr., and Malik Givens ran a 3:21.85 to push past the Wildcats.

A Look Back - Week One, 2016
A host of OSU veterans made their season debuts with huge marks in the first weekend of 2016 a season ago. The squads split up to tackle the Texas A&M Invitational and the JD Martin Invitational in Norman.
At the A&M Team Invitational in College Station, Cowboy All-American John Teeters picked up where he left off the 2015 season by winning the 60-meter dash final in 6.60 seconds. Teeters had the top-time of 6.62 coming out of the preliminary round and defeated TCU's Ronnie Baker and Texas youngster Senoj-Jay Givens in the final to take the win. Teeters was joined in the final by Cowboy freshman Malik Givens who finished sixth in 6.84 seconds.
Jacob Fincham-Dukes made his way into OSU's record book in just his second competition as a Cowboy after finishing third in the long jump competition. The British international jumped a 7.09m/23-3.25 to grab No. six on the all-time indoor list.
Big 12 Cross Country Newcomer of the Year, Josh Thompson, won his debut indoor race for the Cowboys. The transfer from Central Arizona ran a 4:10.59 in the mile final, edging out BYU's Karson Fronk by four-hundredths of a second. Freshman Miles Yapp, who won the 1,000-meter run at the KSU Winter Invitational back in December, finished 17th and Bradley Johnson finished a spot ahead.
Vegard Oelstad started 2016 strong with a third place finish in the 3,000-meter final. His time of 8:15.18 was four seconds faster than the fourth place finisher from Stephen F. Austin.
The Cowgirls had four top-three finishers in College Station in Anna Boyert, Kaela Edwards and Molly Sughroue on the track, and Chase Ealey in the shot put.
Both Edwards and Sughroue ran in the 800-meter final for their first race of the season. Edwards' 2:03.60 was enough to take the win in the event and Sughroue's 2:08.72 got her third. Edwards' time was one-hundredth of a second off her indoor personal best that she ran at the 2015 NCAA Indoor Championships.
Boyert's season debut went well as she finished second in the mile in 4:52.88. Last season, Boyert debuted with a mile just over five minutes but ended the season with a 4:44.40, the sixth-fastest mile in Cowgirl history.
All-American Chase Ealey wrapped up the day with a win in her first shot put competition of the season. Her throw of 16.22m/53-2.75 would be the second-best throw in school history if she did not currently hold the record with a throw of 16.71m/54-10.0 from a season ago.
A small group of athletes made the short trip to Norman, Oklahoma, to participate in the J.D. Martin Invitational.
Jillian Hagen led the way for the Cowgirls, finishing second in the 600-yard run in 1:30.42, which bested her season debut time by nearly two seconds.
As a team, the Cowboys finished sixth and the Cowgirls finished seventh at the A&M Invitational.

OSU Squads in Preseason Top-15
The United States Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association released its preseason top-25 poll for the indoor season, Monday, with the Cowboys and Cowgirls both earning nods at 14 and 11, respectively.
The Cowgirls debut at 11 is their highest preseason rank in school history and their first time in the preseason poll since 2015. The squad is the second-highest ranked team in the conference behind No. 5 Texas.
Last year the Cowgirls finished 10th at the NCAA Championships with returning champion Kaela Edwards winning the indoor mile title.
As for the rest of the Big 12, Baylor sits in 13th, Kansas State in 18th and Oklahoma has the 25 spot.
Conference indoor champions a season ago, the Cowboys slot in at No. 14 in the preliminary ranking, their highest ever position in a preseason indoor poll.
The Pokes come into the year off a cross country season that produced two All-Americans and brought OSU's conference title streak to nine-straight.
Among the Big 12, the Cowboys are the third-highest ranked squad, with Texas (seventh), Texas Tech (12th) and Oklahoma (24th) owning top-25 positions, and Baylor and Kansas State just outside in 27th and 30th.