Flashes to use meet as “dress rehearsal”

Josh Johnston

Kent State’s indoor track and field teams will get a test run for the Mid-American Conference indoor track and field championship meet when they travel to Eastern Michigan’s Bowen Field House tomorrow.

Even though the meet is a non-scoring open event, coach Bill Lawson said the team will use this meet as a “dress rehearsal” for the MAC Championship meet.

“We’re gonna stay in the same hotel that we’re staying (in) for the MAC Championships,” Lawson said. “A lot of the kids will be running the same events or most of the same events they’ll be running at the MAC.”

Lawson said the team will go through the same daily routine they would for the MAC Championship meet.

The men’s team will be challenged at Ypsilanti by pre-season MAC favorites Eastern Michigan and that team’s lead sprinter Clint Allen.

Allen has won MAC track athlete of the week twice this season and provisionally qualified for the NCAA championship meet in the 60-meter dash.

The tough competition could boost some of the men to provisional qualifying marks. Lawson named sophomore pole vaulter Jeremy Brading, senior thrower Jaroslaw Zakrzewski and sophomore sprinter Curtis Eaton Jr. as potential qualifiers.

“We have a number of people that are getting close to that mark,” Lawson said.

Contact sports correspondent Josh Johnston at [email protected].