Dec. 11, 2014
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – The Kentucky track and field teams will begin the 2014-15 indoor season at the Hoosier Open on Friday at Indiana’s Gladstein Fieldhouse.
The Hoosier Open will be UK’s season-opener for the third season running, as the Wildcats have begun competition in December to test the effectiveness of their fall training in each of head coach Edrick Floreal’s previous two years in Lexington.
Kentucky will be joined in Bloomington by 19 other programs including Southeastern Conference foe Tennessee. The rest of the field will be filled by host Indiana, Indiana State, Purdue, Butler, DePaul, Cincinnati and Eastern Kentucky. Representatives from New Mexico, Northern Arizona, Texas, Louisville, and Southern Utah will also participate. Athletes from six non-Division I schools will also be on hand.
The indoor track season will begin in earnest for the Wildcats come the New Year, when the Big Blue Nation will have multiple opportunities to witness the very best of collegiate track and field converge upon Nutter Field House.
The Wildcats will host what has become one of the best regular-season fields of any meet in the nation for the Rod McCravy Memorial Jan. 23-24. Defending Men’s and Women’s National Indoor Champions Oregon, in addition to defending Women’s SEC Indoor Champions Florida, defending Men’s SEC Indoor Champions Arkansas and national powers Florida State, LSU, Texas, Baylor, USC and Georgia amongst other elite squads are slated to compete at the McCravy meet.
The Wildcats will host the nation’s top conference meet, the SEC Championships Feb. 27-28. UK’s first meet of 2015 will be the Kentucky Invitational, Jan. 16-17 in Lexington as some of the region’s top teams will look to shake off any rust accumulated over the holiday break.
The Hoosier Open will begin at 4:30 p.m. Friday with the 5,000 meters. Mackay Wilson and Zack Beavin are slated to start that race.
The Wildcats bring to the 2014-15 squad seven athletes that won a total of 18 All-America honors both indoors and outdoors last year.
Seven returning Wildcats combined to earn a total of 10 All-America accolades indoors last year. Seven athletes won a total of eight All-America honors outdoors last season.
The Kentucky women’s track and field team scored its most points ever at a NCAA Indoor Championships in 2014, finishing with 23 points for ninth place nationally.
The ninth-place finish earned the Wildcats their highest women’s team placement since 1989 when UK ended the meet eighth with the University’s previous all-time NCAA Indoor high score, 15 points.
The UK women’s team also finished inside the national top-10 for the second time ever, the other being 1989.
Dezerea Bryant finished the 2014 NCAA Indoor Championships as the team’s high-scorer having earned 18 points in two events. She came agonizingly close to pulling off the indoor short sprint double finishing runner-up in the 60-meter dash, a day after winning the NCAA 200m Championship.
