As the weather begins to heat up in Fort Worth, so does the competition for the Flying Frogs as they prepare for this weekend’s Mountain West Conference Indoor Championships in Albuquerque, N.M. The Flying Frogs, who are coming off a nearly two-week layoff after accumulating several NCAA provisional marks at the Tyson Invitational in Fayetteville, Ark., have looked solid in practices, head coach Darryl Anderson said. He said the Frogs, who have competed in three separate events in Arkansas, are looking forward to the opportunity to compete elsewhere.
“Everybody’s excited and fired up to get in there and mix it up,” Anderson said.
Heading into the Albuquerque meet, the Frogs hope to continue the kind of consistent and solid performances from sprinters, such as junior Marquita Davis, they had in Fayetteville. Davis finished with high marks in both the women’s 400 meters and the women’s 4×400 relay. The 4×4 team also set a new school record with a time of 3:37.48.
The team needs to capitalize on the opportunity to finish in the top three in several events, Davis said. She said track and field, as a whole, is more mental than physical and the team should leave it all on the track.
“If we don’t win, we want to do well in all of our events,” Davis said. “We want to go in knowing we did our best.”
Like the women, the men’s team will also look for similar performances from its sprinters. One of them is sophomore Justyn Warner, who is coming off his best performance of the young season as he clocked in with a time of 6.84 seconds in the men’s 60 meters. While Warner didn’t consider that he was struggling before his breakout performance in Fayetteville, he said, his performance came at a point when he had “the right race.”
Warner said the team hopes to improve on its third-place finish from a year ago.
While the Frogs seem to have a distinct advantage with their sprinters, Davis and Warner said the BYU Cougars could be their toughest competition in the distance and field portions of the meet.
Anderson said it is hard to grasp how good the team is compared to its toughest competition due to the lack of head-to-head competition.
Anderson said the team is continuing to gel as it is still early in the season and the team isn’t focusing so much on the other teams as it is with its own matters.
“I try not to worry about the competition,” Anderson said. “If we compete hard, everything will take care of itself.