March 21, 2008

Milwaukee - The Marquette University track & field program has spent the entire 2007-08 campaign preparing for its outdoor season, which begins tonight through Saturday, at the Baldy Castillo Invitational hosted by Arizona State. The squad, however, has been in Tempe, Ariz. since Monday training for the event.

"We've had an excellent week of practice and we've had excellent weather," said head coach Bert Rogers. "We've been working out in the mornings and the temperatures have been in the mid-60s and 70s. Individually, we had a lot of success during the indoor (season). Our goals for outdoor are, number one, to qualify as many people as we can for the conference meet and, number two, qualify for the NCAA regional meet."

Friday's opening event at Joe Selleh Track at Sun Angel Stadium will be the hammer throw. All other events will be held Saturday with the field events beginning at 1 p.m. Central Time followed by the running events at 6:30 p.m. A recap of the entire meet and results will be available late Saturday evening.

"Other marks we're trying for is to qualify a couple of the freshman on the distance side for the junior national meets," added Rogers. "It's our first meet, and we hope to take advantage of the weather and get some BIG EAST qualifiers out of the way. This will be a quality meet for us. There's not a lot of teams, but quality competition."