The Real News Louisiana

BATON ROUGE—Throughout the outdoor season, the Northwestern State track and field teams have competed in and learned how to work through all sorts of elements.
This past weekend, they dealt with the wind, and the teams worked through it and it has prepared them for the final stretch of the outdoor season.
The men and women’s teams take that experience as they head to the capital city of Louisiana for the LSU Alumni Gold on Saturday, the second-to-last outdoor meet for Northwestern State before heading to the Southland Conference Championships.
The one-day meet begins at 10 a.m. with the women’s hammer throw, followed by the men’s hammer. The track events start at 12:30 p.m. with the women’s 4×100 relay, followed by the men’s.
“It’s going to be a big meet,” head coach Mike Heimerman said. “LSU and Florida State are going to be there, as are a couple other schools that are top notch that are going to be there and it will be fun to go out there and compete against them.
“LSU set the entry standards pretty high at this meet, so for the ones competing for us, it will be a good measuring stick because they will go against some really, really good talent.”
In addition to Northwestern State heading to LSU, the distance runners are traveling to Rice for the J Fred Duckett Twilight, weeks before traveling back to Rice for the SLC outdoor meet.
Like always, the relay teams showed up in a big way in the last meet at the Michael Johnson Invitational.
The men posted a season best in both relays and those relays as well as the women’s 4×100 relay all finished in the top three among a loaded field.
The men’s 4×100 quartet keeps improving every meet, as the group of Galen Loyd, Mikkel Johansson, Elijah Rowe and Tavis Wilson clocked a 39.74 to place third and beat their previous season best of 39.80, which was set at the Leon Johnson NSU Invitational the previous meet.
While the Lady Demons 4×400 unit did not post a season best, the group of Maygan Shaw, Tranasia Jones, Margaret Conteh and Kahliyah Anderson did finish second with a time of 3:36.49, finishing ahead of teams from TCU as well as homestanding Baylor.
Jones has battled her way through the year after working through obstacles earlier in the season.
“This final season hasn’t gone quite the way I thought it would,” Jones said. “I got sick early in the year in the middle of indoors, so it didn’t go as planned and now I am battling back from a tight hamstring, so it is coming along a bit slowly, but I am excited for conference.”
In addition to her stellar work in the relays, Shaw continued her fantastic season individually as well by outdoing herself once again, setting a new personal best in the 200-meter dash, running a 23.37 at Baylor to place 10th in a strong field. The 23.37 is the top mark in the SLC this season.
The freshmen are improving, led by jumper Roy Morris, who leads the Southland Conference in the long jump, recording a jump of 24-11.25 at the Leon Johnson NSU Invitational earlier this month. He followed that up with a 24-7.25 this past meet at the Michael Johnson Invitational, which is also better than the second-place long jump in the SLC this season (24-6.25). Two of the top three distances in the long jump are by freshmen.
The transition from high school to college took a little bit of time.
“In high school, you weren’t working as hard as you are in college,” he said. “I’ve been coming out here every day and working hard, trying to get it right, knowing you have a big competition coming up that weekend.”
Fellow freshman Ryah Dates has been one of the better throwers in the Southland so far this season, currently ranking sixth in the league in both shot put (47-0.25) and javelin (138-9) and earning points in both events at next month’s conference meet would prove massive for the Lady Demons.
“Physically, she has come a long ways,” Heimerman said. “She just has to relax and do some things at the right time. She had a warm-up throw at Baylor that was massive. She just has to do it during competition as well. But she’s a freshman and she is working on the mental and composure side of things.
“She is a tremendous talent and she is hard on herself and I am too. I talk to her like I do upperclassmen since we have so many of them here. I do it all because I love Ryah and she is a phenomenal young lady and she is going to be a tremendous athlete for us.”
Those two are freshmen to watch moving forward, as are Teodora Samac, William Achee, Garrett Graves and Bruce Boon as a multis athlete who barely missed out on the podium in the indoor season.
Following the meets, the track and field teams head to the campus of TCU for the Horned Frog Invite on May 3, the final meet prior to the Southland Conference Championships.