At the Mt. Sac Relays this weekend Tim Montgomery and Maurice Green will approach F-15 speed as they match-up in the premiere event, the 100-meter rumble.
Held at relatively obscure Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., the annual relay carnival has become the largest track and field spectacle in the country. The meet showcases athletes from all ages in the track world, from local Los Angeles area high school competitors to Olympic gold medallists. The field is ripe with future stars, Olympic hopefuls, already crowned track royalty, and some representatives from the Penn State women's track and field squadron.
She won't be competing against the queen of U.S. track and field Marion Jones, but Penn State's version of track royalty, sprinter Connie Moore, will be holding her own against collegiate competition. The Nittany Lions will be taking only 20 athletes to Los Angeles for the relays carnival this weekend, while the remaining team competes at home at the Nittany Lion Relays. The same travel squad that competed last weekend at the Sea Ray Relays in Knoxville, Tenn., will be competing in California this weekend.
"For us its going to be fun because we get to be in competition among some of the premiere athletes in the sport," Penn State women's track coach Beth Alford-Sullivan said.
Imagine if instead of the NFL draft combine, they ran an entire weekend of football games back-to-back pitting Maurice Clarett against Ray Lewis. Right after that Larry Fitzgerald takes on Charles Woodson -- that is a fair analogy of the caliber of competition the Lions will see this weekend. Moore, luckily, is no stranger to premiere competition. Earlier this year Moore competed at the Millrose Games in New York City, Jones' first entrance back into competition after giving birth to her son.
After the Millrose Games, Moore mentioned the competition certainly helped her to continue transitioning from the collegiate level to the international level. The Mt. Sac Relays will be a good test for Moore who is set to run in the Olympic Trials later this summer.
Recruiting News
The late signing period for track and field sports opened yesterday, but Alford-Sullivan indicated that she could not comment on anything specific to Penn State recruiting at this time.
She did note that the team was pursuing two to three athletes, but could not elaborate on whom or for what events due to NCAA recruiting stipulations. Recruiting is much different in track and field than other sports, because teams have about 18 scholarships. Those scholarships are then usually split in order to reward as many athletes as possible.
With the number of scholarships so low, it is much more common to walk-on to track and field teams in college and compete for split-scholarship money. Most teams pursue only about five athletes each year for full-scholarship recruits.
In the early signing period that took place in November, Penn State signed distance runner Nikki Bonsack of Rockford, Mich. The signing was a huge as the very talented high school senior was also being pursued by Big Ten power house Michigan.
