The Falcon track and field team will look to put together a strong effort in the MAC Indoor Championships on Friday and Saturday, which the team is also hosting this season. However, the team is also looking forward to the NCAA Indoor Championships as well as the team sends its first athlete to the national meet since 2001.
Senior thrower Aliyah Gustafson will represent the Falcons in the NCAA Indoor Championships on Mar. 9-10 in College Station, Texas.
“It’s a significant accomplishment,” Falcons head coach Lou Snelling said. “Out of all the NCAA championships out there, indoor is the most challenging statistically to qualify for. There’s 16 individuals per event and that’s it, so for her to do that, that’s huge.”
Gustafson has earned MAC Field Athlete of the Week this season, to go along with two times being named MAC Scholar-Athlete of the Week.
“It’s exciting to me, it’s a special recognition,” Gustafson said. “There’s a lot of great track and field athletes in our conference, so to be voted the top one for a week is pretty special.”
However, Gustafson is also looking to carry the momentum of the indoors season into the outdoors season.
“After having a great indoor season, I’m going to hold my expectations pretty high,” Gustafson said. “I don’t want to settle for less so I’m really just going to go out and try to finish with a bang.”
However, the team still believes that there are areas in their game that they could improve on.
“For us, I would say we want to improve on the discus,” Falcon throws coach Derrick Vicars said. “It’s one of our most competitive events in the conference and last year we only scored three points, but this year I feel like we’re capable of doing more than that.”
The team also believes that they can carry on the momentum from this season into the next season.
“Right now we’re really focused on indoors and obviously we’re doing a good job there,” Vicars said. “The group as a whole is killing it, but I feel like we’re looking to do much of the same (in outdoors) and try to get as many people as we can to the regional meet and hopefully we can get somebody out to the national meet.”
With the regular season winding down, the team feels that they are prepared mentally for the MAC championships.
“In general, we just want to finish off what we started at this point in terms of the regular season,” Snelling said. “We’re focused on the MAC championships already, but that focus narrows even more once we get past the final two weekends.”
