Mississippi State University will send its track team to College Station, Texas, to compete in the NCAA Indoor Championships Friday through Saturday.

For Dejon Devore, a junior middle distance runner from Oak Harbor, Washington, this is an opportunity to showcase his abilities.  

“This is a blessing, I honestly did not really think I would be here,” Devore said. “This is really a great opportunity to show my talents, and exceed even my own beliefs in what I can achieve.”

Long distance Rhianwedd Price-Weimer, a senior from Llandrindod, Wales, United Kingdom, said it is a great accomplishment to reach this level. Price-Weimer won a national championship in outdoors.

“It is always a great achievement to know that you have reached that level and you can go and race indoors,” said Price-Weimar. “It just opens the doors to opportunities, you get to race the best people in the NCAAs.”

Price-Weimer said she hopes the competition goes better than one race she had. Her distance coach, Houston Franks, said she was disqualified in prelims for stepping on the line at the start of the race, despite her running well that day.

“From past experiences from indoors, I am hoping it is not going to go the way it did last time,” Price-Weimer said. “I have learned from all different experiences, just learning different race tactics, just learning different ways people race. It makes you more excited than nervous because you know the great opportunity you are having.”

Head coach Steve Dudley spoke about his freshman runner Marco Arop, who is currently 10th in the nation with a 1:47.62 time in the 800m. Arop said he has an excited but nervous feeling about the event.

“Hopefully the freshman mistake was made two weeks ago at SEC championships, once you make an NCAA championship you are not a freshman anymore,” Arop said. “We are not going to look at Marco as a freshman, but the fact he knows now that I am good enough, I can take control of the race, and run a strong place and that can make sure I am in the finals.”

Steve Thomas coaches Logan Boss, a senior from O’Brien, Florida, who won gold at the SEC Indoor Championships. Thomas said Boss is getting stronger and this will help her ability.

“One of the things we always think about when training jumpers is how strong can we get an athlete,” Thomas said. “As her strength levels go up, her jumping ability will go up. Our goal has always been 1.94 meters, because that is the standard to make the world championships.”

Boss said she spent a lot of time on her technique and wants to go into the meet giving it the respect it deserves. She said she was ready to go have fun competing.

“We’ve worked a lot on technique, and built off of last year,” Boss said. “Last year was a really great foundation we kind of built from then. We have worked on little things and continued to improve. So I am just excited to be back in Texas A&M because I jump well there and it works well with me.”

Franks believes Rhianwedd is going to run well in the meet. She missed a year of running with pneumonia and pleurisy just a year after winning a national championship. He said the senior was hitting all of her marks.

“She is back, and is starting to hit the checkpoints she hit when she won the national championship,” Franks said. “So that is exciting, she is going to do well. I am not sure if she can win or not, but I think by outdoors we can have a more serious conversation about that.”

The meet is the last meet before the team transitions into the spring season. Dudley said any championship like the one this weekend would be a stepping stone for the outdoor national championships.

“We are disappointed if we are not in the top 20 of the nation,” Dudley said. “We want to springboard into outdoor season, if both teams left there in the top 15 or 20, it would be fantastic because we are built a little bit more for outdoors. The Olympics are outdoors, not indoors.”