April 27, 2006

McNeese State's track and field athletes will compete in a twilight meet Saturday at Rice University.

Of interest to head coach Ty Sevin will be the performance of the men's 4x100 meter relay team.

It's the first time this spring that the Cowboys have entered the sprint relay and making up the foursome will be Ramon Smothers, Darrick Brown, Quinten Lawrence and Jimmie Heath.

Heath, who will run the anchor leg, will be competing with a broken wrist.

"He can run, he just can't vault," said Sevin of the Cowboy standout who ranks among the best in the nation this season with an 18-0 1/2 vault.

Sevin feels that the foursome is capable of pulling off a clocking somewhere in the 40 second vicinty.

"We've had some good workouts and we will just have to see how they do," Sevin said.

He's hoping for something around the 40.4 second mark which would qualify the quartet for the NCAA regionals.

It would also be among the fastest in school history. The school record is 40.09 and that was set by the team of Reggie Howard, Roger Smith, Raymond Bennett and John Hoffpauir in 2000. The second fastest time is 40.35 and the third fastest is 40.42.

Two years ago (2004) the Cowboy team of Lawrence Darby, Micah Gradney, Brad Augustus and Dylan Navarre won the Southland Conference 4x100 meter title.

Also at Saturday's meet, Cowgirl standout Michelle Rzepka will be one of the favorites in the women's pole vault. She's gone a school record 13-7 this season.

Sevin said that some of his vaulters would have to use borrowed poles at the meet.

"Our poles are still in California," he said. "We're hoping to get them before Saturday but they haven't been shipped back to us as yet."

McNeese competed in two events in California two weeks ago and the poles got tied up in a shipping snafu.