Nicholls kick-starts track season Friday at LSU Purple Tiger meet

When Nicholls takes part in the LSU Purple Tiger meet on Friday in Baton Rouge, it will be the first opportunity for the track teams to get a gauge as to where they might stand in the indoor season and later outdoor season.

“I think what’s exciting about indoors is that there are some people that it does lend to their strengths better,” Nicholls track coach Stefanie Slekis said. “So, I think we have some people that can have a great showing at the indoor level before we move to outdoor.

“(For) a lot of coaches, you build into the outdoor season from your indoor season. We’re excited for the indoor season. We go to three regular season meets in the championship, so it’s not as many meets as outdoors. I think we can have a lot of success.”

Along with Nicholls and host LSU, others taking part in the indoor season’s first event are Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, McNeese, New Orleans, Southeastern Louisiana, Mobile, Meridian Community College, and South Alabama.

Following the Purple Tiger meet, Nicholls is scheduled to take part in the McNeese Indoor Invite on January 25-26, the LSU Twilight meet February 16, and the Southland Conference Championships Feb. 25-26 in Birmingham, Ala.

The outdoor season for Nicholls begins March 16 with the Louisiana Classics meet in Lafayette. Other scheduled meets for the Colonels include the LSU Keyth Talley Invitational on March 23, the Southeastern Strawberry Relays April 12 in Hammond, and the J. Fred Duckett Twilight on April 20 in Houston.

The outdoor season Southland Conference Championship is slated for May 2-4 in San Antonio.

Along with the obvious difference between competing indoors versus outdoors like the weather factor, some events are not held during both seasons (such as no hammer, javelin, or discus

events indoors), while race distances can also vary.

“Some of the events are very different. You think even like the 400, but it’s like a certain runner might do really well in the indoor 400 if they are great front runner because it benefits you to get out and be the first one to cut in and it’s hard to get around people once they’re front running, in the 400 and 800 particularly. Even an event like that where you’re like, ‘it’s identical.’ It’s not actually identical,” explained Slekis. “The 60 is not the same as the 100. There’s some people that are great 60-meter hurdles that aren’t as strong as 100-meter hurdlers or 110 hurdlers.

“For our women’s multis (multi event) group, they’re doing the pentathlon versus heptathlon – the one-day event versus the two-day event.”

In terms of preparations for the indoor season, there are some challenges for schools the size of Nicholls.

“The only real disadvantage is that we don’t have a banked two-meter track to practice on,” said Slekis.

That, plus the fact practice for the Colonels always takes place outdoors for the indoor season.

“Practicing outdoors isn’t always a disadvantage. When we have good weather, it’s less pounding on you to not have to make all those turns on the sharp indoor track. We have a really nice outdoor track that lends itself to preventing injuries because how the surface is,” said Slekis, whose team practices at the track of the Thibodaux Regional Sports Complex.

Also, some schools elect not to compete in certain events that are part of the indoor season.

“That’s super common in our sport. People that go super niche and they just literally don’t do anything but five events,” said Slekis.

Nicholls will participate in most events.

“The only events we don’t compete in – when you look at what events are at the conference championship – we don’t pole vault. We don’t throw the weight (events) and then we don’t do like the men’s multi. Otherwise, I think we’ll enter someone I would think in every event indoors,” Slekis explained.

Early indoor meets such as the LSU Purple Tiger, Slekis said, can help to evaluate where track athletes currently stand and what role they may play in future events, such as Sydney Brown in the high jump.

“I’m pretty excited to see how Sydney does in the high jump. She PR’d (personal record) at our intra squad we had in December,” Slekis noted.

Other key early performers looking to establish themselves include Maria Nikalaou and Kassidy Besson among the women competitors.

“Then a bunch of our distance runners, switching down events right where you go from running 10K cross to now getting to race the 800. We’re pretty excited to see how Maria (Nikalaou) and Kassidy (Besson) do indoors,” said Slekis.

“The big thing is having benchmarks for a lot of our athletes,” she continued. “In certain events, setting the high jump, (Brown) could come out and set a PR the very first meet, move up on that all-time list and have a good rank in the conference, versus maybe our multis (multi event) girls getting a gauge of where they’re at.

“Our sprinters, it just depends on how great their training was by themselves. That’s also the big thing with this first meet – you were on your own for four weeks. We sent them training (regimens), but they’ve been trained by themselves, so everyone had different resources available to them.”

Unlike a sport like basketball which will generally have a set lineup, the events track athletes compete in can remain fluid up until the conference meet, according to Slekis.

“You look at basketball, you are playing the same game every time you play, maybe changing the starting lineup a little bit, but once you are in conference play, you are probably starting your good people versus like we have an athlete like Maria, we won’t know until that last regular season meet if I’m going to race her in 800 or the mile at the conference championship and how much of a work load we are going to put on her,” Slekis said. “Who is going to run distance relay, is she going back in the 3K, but she’s not going to run those same events every single meet. She’ll run 600, she’ll run 800, she’ll run a mile, and then we’ll go to the conference meet and decide what we’re doing.

“Or like Luke Futey (on the men’s side), he going to run 5K, 3K in the conference meet, he won’t even race a 5K until we get there, then he will race the mile, 3K, and then the mile again for his regular-season meets.”

Among the men, another athlete of note heading into the start of the track season is Amari Godette.

“Amari, he set the school record last year in the 60, so kind of (interested in) seeing where he can be indoors,” said Slekis.

Another male competitor who may be a factor for the Colonels is junior college transfer Andrei Fuentes.

“He is going to be hurdling for us, which is exciting since we’ve had some really good women’s hurdlers in our time at Nicholls, but we haven’t gotten a male hurdler that was at that level yet. We’re excited to see what Andrei can do in the hurdles,” Slekis said.

In terms of what the SLC competition may look like, that could take a while to access, according to Slekis.

“In track, you have no idea until people start competing. You really don’t,” the Nicholls coach said. “I think we kind of focus on January we have two opportunities to compete. We want to go out and have really great efforts there and it’s really about gaining fitness together. You haven’t had your coach, you haven’t had your teammates, so let’s focus on a really great training block in January and then we go to race in February again at the second LSU meet.

“That’s right before the conference meet. By then, we should be fit. We should be ready to go, and then we’ll have a really good idea of the conference list then because a lot of teams might only compete two weeks before conference, so we’ll actually see their marks before we go to the LSU meet, which will be our last meet before conference.”