MOREHEAD, Ky. – Eight meets, including the first home event for the Morehead State track and field team in ages, dot the Eagles' outdoor schedule this spring. The competitions are spread out over nine weekends, with a break between the final one and the Ohio Valley Conference Championships, which runs from May 15-17 in Cape Girardeau, Mo.
"I tried to fill pretty much every week so, if we need to, we can pick and choose if we need to drop something from our schedule if the weather looks bad," said MSU coach
Clay Dixon.
The Eagles will be making stops all over the state of Kentucky, including in Richmond twice, plus Louisville, Highland Heights, Morehead and Lexington.
Five of the competitions are repeats from last year.
The first of two meets at Eastern Kentucky opens the schedule on Friday, Mar. 21. It will be the second straight campaign the Eagles will run twice outdoors at its archrival. The Eastern Kentucky Spring Invitational is the event's name. MSU competed there last year, when, ironically, the weather was anything but spring-like. One of only three scored meets last season, the men finished fourth and the women were fifth.
For the first time under coach Dixon, the Eagles will travel to St. Louis for the Washington University (Mo.) Distance Carnival. It will be the first of five multi-day meets and will run from Thursday, Mar. 27 to Friday, Mar. 28. As the name suggests, it will be distance-only events with the Eagles entering races of 1,500 meters or longer.
"WashU should be fun," Dixon said. "Hoping the weather is nice and we can get some fast times early in the season for the distance events."
Once the calendar turns to April, the Blue and Gold will participate in several familiar competitions. The two-day Jim Vargo Bellarmine Invitational runs on Friday, Apr. 4 and Saturday, Apr. 5. It will be just the second time in the last 13 years the event will take place on multiple days. It also happened in 2022. The Eagles have competed at Bellarmine eight times since 2013. Only the 2023 meet was scored. Both MSU squads were 11th of 11 at that event.
A return trip to the Northern Kentucky Invitational is next on the docket. Since NKU does not have its own track, last year's meet was held at nearby Bishop Brossart High School's facility in Alexandria, and it is expected to be back there again this April. This will be the second edition of the competition. Last season marked the first time the Norse hosted a meet. This year, the event will be held on Saturday, Apr. 12.
Since Morehead State only recently rebuilt its track, it has not hosted a track and field meet in approximately 40-plus years. The date of the last home meet is not available. This competition will be held on Friday, Apr. 18 on the A.L. "Buck" Dawson Track inside Jayne Stadium. The meet has been titled the Morehead State Eagle Twilight and is expected to include 10 events: sprints, distance races, horizontal jumps and relays. A field of around five schools are expected to enter.
It will be the lone meet this year held exclusively in the evening.
"The team is excited to have a home event on April 18th," Dixon said. "(It'll be the) first one since the early 80s, so it should be a lot of fun."
A return trip to Richmond, Ky., and the Rick Erdmann Invitational follows on Friday, Apr. 25 and Saturday, Apr. 26. The Eagles have attended the meet every year since 2021, except 2022. MSU also participated from 2010-12.
The final competition before the OVC Championships will be the Jim Green Invitational at the University of Kentucky. Like the Rick Erdmann Invitational, the Jim Green Invitational is a regular stop on MSU's schedule. This year's event will take place from Friday, May 2 to Saturday, May 3. It will be the ninth time since 2014 that the Eagles will compete at a meet held at UK. This is the third time the name is the Jim Green Invitational. From 2021-22, it was named the Kentucky Invitational. From 2014-18, it was called the Kentucky Relays.
The OVC Championships will be held a week later than usual this spring. It will be from Thursday, May 15 through Saturday, May 17 at Southeast Missouri's Abe Stuber Track Complex. Last year, the Eagle men finished 10th and the women 11th. The meet was last held in Cape Girardeau, Mo., in 2019.
A regional meet will be held at two sites (Jacksonville, Fla. and College Station, Texas) from May 28-31. The NCAA Championships will take place from June 11-14 in Eugene, Ore.
