Marshall Track & Field Ready For Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships

 By Ben Anderson


    Marshall Track & Field aims to bring home gold for the third consecutive conference championship meet when it travels to Birmingham Alabama Monday for the Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships. 


    Leading the way for the women’s team entering the meet is graduate senior cross country runner Kylee Mastin, who broke the women’s school 1k record with a time of 9:21.31 in the David Henry Valentine Invitational in Boston over the weekend. 


    Marshall cross country head coach Caleb Bowen said that taking Mastin to Boston was to bring her a challenge that she will have to face at the Sun Belt Conference Indoor Championships.


    “The David Henry Valentine Invitational is literally the biggest and most competitive meet in indoor track,” Bowen said during an interview with First and Ben. “When we sat down right before and right after Liberty (Open) we knew that she needed some extra help to go faster and she was not going to get that here just with the teams that were coming.”  


    “She was in the fourth out of fifteen heats,” Bowen said. “Great heat to be in every one of those girls were really fast and she got pulled along to a really good time.”


    Leading the way for the men’s team is junior sprints runner Isaiah Valentine, most recently breaking the men’s indoor 400 meter-dash record at the Marshall Invitational with a time of 47.99.


    Valentine said that the team’s previous meets have well prepared them for the competition of the Sun Belt Conference.


    “Our team can compete with anybody at this point,” Valentine said during an interview with First and Ben. “We’ve seen Olympians, we’ve seen pro guys at these meets, and just knowing that we can compete with anybody at this point, and I think our team is ready for conference.”


    Valentine said that what stands out about the men’s team is its depth.


    “We have so much depth,” Valentine said. “We can bring four to five guys in every side of the event group. It’s awesome to see that we have depth from the one or like sixteen, to two, to eight, its every event on the men’s side.”


    Valentine said that the competition level grows every year in the Sun Belt Conference.


    “Everyone is going to be at their best,” Valentine said. “Everyone’s been training all year and unfortunately every year gets faster and faster. So, our team has gotten faster and faster with the recruiting class that coaches brought in.”


    The Herd now aims to win its first team conference title since 1997 when the men’s team won the Southern Conference Indoor Championships. 


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