SOU NOTES

ASHLAND – The Southern Oregon track and field team will seek to dethrone defending champion Concordia this week at the Cascade Collegiate Conference championships in Klamath Falls.

With Oregon Tech hosting the three-day championship meet, beginning Thursday and concluding Saturday, the Raiders will have their shortest travel distance of the season this week. Southern Oregon head coach Grier Gatlin believes the athletes have improved as the season has neared the end, and he expects good things this week.

“I think that our meets leading up to this week have been productive,” Gatlin said. “We've had a number of people on both the men's and women's sides who've had personal bests at the last couple of meets, which indicates that our training and all of our physiological stuff in terms of rest and progression through training is peaking at the right time.”

On the men's side, the Raiders will look to take down six-time defending champion Concordia. Last season the championship came down to one half-point, as the Cavaliers defeated the Raiders 192.5 to 192 in a heartbreaker. This year Eastern Oregon will join in the battle as the men's competition will likely come down to one of those three programs.

“It looks like it'll be a dogfight,” Gatlin said of the three-way battle on the men's side. “All of us have our different areas in which we're strong, and it's just going to be one of those things where we're going to have to see how it plays out when we get over there.”

Senior Max Perry (Florence, Ore./Siuslaw) heads to Klamath Falls as the Raiders' lone returning individual conference champion from last season, when Perry claimed the shot put title with a throw of 54-11 ½. Numerous other SOU men's athletes will have a chance at an individual title, including Jonz Olander (Grants Pass, Ore./Grants Pass) in the 400, Eric Avila (Chula Vista, Calif./Bonita Vista) in the 1500, Matt Battaglia (Salinas, Calif./Salinas) in the 800, James Johnstone (Lake Arrowhead, Calif./Rim of the World) and Scott McIntyre (Redding, Calif./Ponderosa) in the steeplechase and Sullivan Stevens (Sparks, Nev./Spanish Springs) in the 110 hurdles, among others.

“We have numerous guys contending for individual titles, and it becomes very important for our guys in the seventh and eighth spots as well,” Gatlin said. “It's only one or two points, but if we can nickel and dime some teams in certain places, I think that we have a good chance of showing well over at the conference championships.”

On the women's side, Gatlin looks to see continued improvement from the team as a whole while individuals compete for all-conference status in various events.

“For our women, we're more concentrating on individual conference championships and titles versus an overall team title,” Gatlin said. “We just don't have the depth yet on the women's side to compete for an overall conference title, but we certainly have numerous athletes that have a chance to be all-conference on the women's side.”

Overall, this will give the Raiders their final chance to face some familiar competition this season before sending their national qualifiers to the NAIA Championships in two weeks.

“It's a little nerve-wracking, but it's fun,” Gatlin said of the championship meet. “That's why we do this, to see how we're going to stand up against the rest of our conference.”