Marquette Set To Host Twilight Meet Saturday
4/23/2008 12:00:00 AM | Track & Field
April 23, 2008
2008 Marquette Twilight Meet Links:
Visiting Team Info (PDF) 
Event Schedule (PDF)
Heat Sheets (PDF)
Complete Meet Results
"Bus" Shimek Track & Field Facility records (PDF)
2008 Marquette Twilight Meet Promo (PDF) (2.6MB)
MILWAUKEE -- The Marquette University track and field program will host its first home meet in six years on Saturday, April 26 at the Melvin "Bus" Shimek Memorial Track & Field Facility at Valley Fields. The Twilight Invitational Meet will kick off with field events at 1 p.m. and continue with running events slated for a 5 p.m. start time.
"The team is pretty excited to get a home meet, seeing as this will be the first one since 2002. Last year we were planning on and all set up to host it and the Wednesday before we got six inches of snow," said head track and field coach Bert Rogers. "That aside, it's finally going to work out, the forecast looks good, and we're pretty excited. I know just even at practice the last two days, everybody has been talking about it, how excited they are to run on the home track and just the whole thing, it will be cool."
University of Illinois-Chicago, Wisconsin, UWM, DePaul, Northwestern, and Loyola-Chicago will join Marquette in the last weekend prior to the BIG EAST Championships. The Golden Eagles hope to add to the 27 student-athletes who have already posted qualifying marks for the 2008 BIG EAST Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Five MU student-athletes have recorded regional qualifying times.
"This is really our last chance to qualify for conference since we're heading to the BIG EAST meet next weekend. We've got a couple of people on the team who are still on the bubble that are young, up-and-comers and haven't quite got it together in terms of putting down that qualifying mark so this is our last opportunity," said Rogers. "We've got a couple others that are right on the bubble of getting that regional qualifying mark and this is just another good opportunity to do that."
Because of the six-year shortage of home track and field meets, Rogers hopes to draw a large crowd from the Marquette students and community.
"Come on out. Since we haven't had a home meet since 2002, it's almost like a full class of students that hasn't had an opportunity to check out a Marquette track and field meet, so we're glad to get that back," Rogers said. "Track and field in the United States, in terms of participation, is one of the more popular events, and I think there's probably a lot of people on campus who ran track in high school, and we invite them to come on out and check it out because we have a lot of hard-working student-athletes on this team that are very good at what they do. It's an opportunity to show off for the homefolk who maybe don't always get to see us. It would be nice to get everybody out there in their gold shirts and cheering on the blue and gold."
The Melvin "Bus" Shimek Track & Field Facility is located on Canal Street just west of the 16th Street Viaduct across from Potawatomi Casino and will host all competition with the exception of hammer and javelin. The hammer and javelin will be contested at the MU Throws Field approximately one mile east of the track at 8th Street and Canal Street just east of the I-94/I-43 High Rise Bridge.
Admission to all events is free. Results will be available at www.accuracetiming.com following the meet.