The last time Mississippi State hosted a track and field meet, Greg Byrne had been announced as the new athletic director a month earlier and former football coach Sylvester Croom was wrapping up his final spring practice at MSU.
Hustling to the Bulldog Invitational at Carl Maddox Track from the spring football game in 2008 was O’Neal Wilder, then a freshman two-sport athlete.
With the $3.2 million renovation to the track complete, Wilder and the rest of the MSU track and field squad will compete in Starkville for the first time since 2008 when they host the inaugural SEC/Big Ten Challenge on Saturday.
“I think a lot of people are going to respect track a little more after watching us run this weekend,” said Wilder, a member of the Bulldogs’ third-ranked 4×400 relay team.
Representing the SEC along with MSU will be Auburn, Georgia and Ole Miss, while Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State and Purdue will compete on behalf of the Big Ten.
The Bulldogs enter the meet, their second outdoor event of the season, ranked eighth in the USTFCCCA polls, and head coach Steve Dudley believes there will be plenty of talent between the eight schools competing on Saturday.
“If you come to this track meet and watch every event, and then come not this summer but the next and watch the Olympic games, you will be watching some of the same athletes,” Dudley said.
The idea for the SEC/Big Ten Challenge came from Al Schmidt, who, after 22 years as head coach, is now the Director of Track and Field at MSU. Schmidt said he often compared his teams with teams from the Big Ten, and developed the idea with other Big Ten coaches while working with the U.S. track and field team.
Instead of the usual team scoring, the meet will be scored conference against conference. In each event the top four scores from each conference, regardless of school, will be tallied into a point system. At the end of the events, a champion will be declared on both the men’s and women’s side.
The scoring system is the same one used in the track and field World Cup, and both Schmidt and Dudley like the idea of a clear-cut winner among the conferences.
“You go to a track meet somewhere and nobody knows who won the track meet,” Schmidt said. “This is a way for us to score uniquely, but everyone will know whether the SEC won or the Big Ten won at the end of the meet.”
The event will take place on MSU’s brand new surface, which features wider lanes and is now considered a top of the line track. Schmidt said it is designed to host the SEC Championships and, hopefully, a first round NCAA meet in the future.
When the first USTFCCCA poll came out on Wednesday, MSU was well-represented. The rankings are based on results from last season as well as the first events of 2011.
The Bulldog men were ranked eighth overall, with sophomore Tavaris Tate ranked first in the men’s 400-meter dash. Wilder is ranked eighth in the 400-meter dash, while the 4×100-meter relay team is ranked sixth. D’Angelo Cherry is ranked third in the 100-meter.
On the women’s side, Jody-Ann Muir is ranked 15th in the 400-meter dash and Keisha Wallace is ranked 22nd in the 100-meter hurdles.
The men’s relay teams will be a featured attraction over the season as Tate and Wilder finish their recoveries from injuries. The team has a mix of experience and youth that gives depth that was not there last season.
“We might have depth but still have to work hard to qualify and get to where we need to be,” Tate said. “If we don’t, then having the depth is just in vain.”
Dudley added that the lineups in the relay teams will be fluid in the early stages of the season.
“On the men’s side, we’ve got more depth than we’ve ever had,” Dudley said. “For me to sit here and tell you we know what order we’re gonna go in would be extremely premature.”
The SEC/Big Ten Challenge will begin with field events at 9 a.m. on Saturday and the running events to follow at 1:00. There will also be over 200 MSU track and field alumni on hand, and the coaches are expecting one of the biggest crowds in MSU track history.