Track & Field Treks to C-USA Indoor Championships – University of North Texas Athletics – Mean Green Sports
DENTON, Texas – North Texas track & field has reached championship season, as the Mean Green are set for the 2022 Conference USA Indoor Track & Field Championships Saturday and Sunday at the Birmingham CrossPlex in Birmingham, Ala.
“I’m always excited for championship season,” director of track & field Carl Sheffield said. “The fall is such a long, hot time. When you finally get to the championship part of the season, if you’ve done your work, then you’re excited about it. I think we have, so I’m looking forward to our chances this weekend.”
Going into the meet, the Mean Green women’s team has three student-athletes ranked in the top-eight in Conference USA, along with several others on the cusp who will compete to score this weekend.
“I think our women’s team’s challenge is just going to be numbers,” Sheffield said. “We have a really young women’s team. A lot of them haven’t been to a conference championship before. It’s a lot in Conference USA. It’s really competitive, and if you haven’t been to one, it kind of catches you off balance. They’re competitive, they’re just young. The experience of competing in college is different. If they can get close to what they’ve been doing in the regular meets, then we have a good chance of making some finals. That’s our goal, to try to put as many of them in a final as we can.”
On the men’s side, UNT has 12 student-athletes in the C-USA top-eight, including three in the top-three.
“I think our men’s team is poised to do something good,” Sheffield said. “There are a lot of things that need to fall our way, because it’s such a competitive group of teams at the top. I feel good about our chances. I think we have a number of guys in some places that can do well. We just have to show up on that day and do well.
“We went from sixth to eighth to second over the past three years. I think it’s just my guys growing up and understanding who they were as athletes, understanding Conference USA and what it took to compete at that level. We just got lucky and put the right guys in the right places, and we were able to score points. We’re not going to catch people off guard like that again.”
Live results from Birmingham will be provided by Adkins Trak Timing Associates. The meet will be streamed live on CUSA.tv both Saturday and Sunday.
“We’re going to have to beat a lot of people,” Sheffield said. “We’re just going to have to be better than them on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and let them take score. I like our chances. I really do. We’re short in some places that we typically have been good, but we’re good in some places that we haven’t been. So, I think it balances out. Hopefully, we can do our best and at the end of the day when they count the scores, it falls our way.”
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