GNAC track and field

[tsull]

Attended the meet in Monmouth, warm weather, well-run, some great performances. Track can be a tough watch, worked a prep meet recently, it went from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., and the timers were 1 hour ahead of schedule. The GNAC meet took "only" 4 hours, all finals on Saturday, no heats which was great. WWU was impressive, winning both men's and women's team titles; WOU was 2nd in both men's and women's team titles. Wolves hopes went out the door late in the meet as WWU had some great 5K runners (the 2nd to the last event), while WOU did not; same in the women's race. WOU is good at middle distance; not good at distance. They get most of their points in the field events on both men's and women's teams. WWU has large teams and are pretty balanced across the board in sprints, distance, field events, and relays.

Simon Fraser women's sprinter Marie Eloise-Leclair, winning the 100 in 11.4 and 200 in 23.9, times that would win a lot of D1 conference meets. She also ran on two winning relay teams. Only a sophomore, she's a pretty incredible athlete. Simon Fraser women got third, good team. I know track and field isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed the meet.

[Runnin' Cat]

CWU had their first placer in 12 years in an event 800m or longer on the men's side.

I remember the good old days when CWU would dominate the distance events and winning district titles. That program has fallen a long way.

[tsull]

Western Oregon has a great track and field coach right now, with some heavy D1 experience, they moved him up from the assistant job couple years ago. They won a pair of conference titles indoors. He really knows what he's doing.

That said, Western Washington stacked 40 plus distance points on Friday, basically positioning themselves for the title. Western Oregon's best sprinter is also on loan from the football team. So there's some huge gaps in men's track with not very good distance guys and not enough sprinters. They make hay in the field events, which is fine. Western Washington was pretty loaded across the board and you just can't surrender 60 to 70 points in the distances. I was a bit surprised that Central Washington wasn't stronger in track and field.

There are runners out there, Northwest Nazarene had a great runner, who got second in the 5,000 and 10,000 and he's a true freshman from a small Idaho town. He was very impressive. There are people to be found out there all over the Northwest and West Coast. Have a guess there's some decent printers out there too. Nevertheless, I'm really pleased about the coach at Western Oregon and what he's doing with the program, they just need to add to a few events.