STEPHENVILLE – Just five weeks stand between the official return of Tarleton track and field.
As student athletes break for the winter holidays following the conclusion of finals week, the program revealed its complete 2022 indoor and outdoor schedule on Thursday.
The Texans will compete in a total of 10 regular season meets across Texas – three indoor and seven outdoor – and conclude both slates with trips out-of-state for the Western Athletic Conference Indoor and Outdoor Championships.
The season officially gets underway at a familiar stomping ground. Tarleton begins the indoor campaign on Jan. 14-15 at the Texas Tech Corky Classic in Lubbock. The Texans competed in multiple indoor meets at the Red Raiders’ Sports Performance Center facility in five-of-six seasons between 2015-2020 and trekked to west Texas for the Corky Classic in 2020 in their final year at NCAA Division II.
The 2022 edition of the Corky Classic holds an additional layer of significance. It marks Tarleton’s first-ever indoor meet as a Division I program. The WAC did not sponsor an indoor track and field championship in 2021 due to COVID-19, instead moving directly into the outdoor season.
Tarleton then heads south the following week for the FasTrak Athletix Collegiate Challenge on Jan. 22 in Houston and returns to Lubbock for the Texas Tech Open and Multis on Jan. 28-29.
The team will then taper training for two weeks before venturing to the Land of Enchantment for the WAC Indoor Championships on Feb. 18-19 in Albuquerque.
The meet marks just the fourth conference championship appearance across all sports in Tarleton’s WAC and D1 era. It also offers Tarleton its first opportunity to see how the program stacks up against a reloaded WAC with the January additions of Abilene Christian, Lamar, Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin swelling the conference to 13 members.
The first three meets on Tarleton’s outdoor schedule are carbon copies of its 2021 lineup. The Texans open up on March 17-19 at the ACU Wes Kittley Invitational in Abilene and will then send athletes to the Texas Relays (March 23-26) and David Noble Relays (March 31-Apr. 1). The Texans competed at each meet last season and have done so annually since 2014.
April will be the busiest four-week stretch of the spring semester for Tarleton, as the program has four meets on the docket. The month starts off with a short trip south to Waco for the Baylor Invitational on Apr. 2. Two drives east in as many weeks are on deck, as Tarleton will then compete at the North Texas Classic and SFA Invite on Apr. 9 and Apr. 15, respectively, in Denton and Nacogdoches. Following a well-deserved week of rest, Tarleton caps its regular season on Apr. 28 at the UT Arlington Invitational.
Tarleton possesses familiarity with its April slate. The Texans competed at both the North Texas Classic and UT Arlington Invitational in 2021 and received an invite to the prestigious Michael Johnson Invitational at Baylor as well.
The ultimate prize and apex of the track and field season then awaits Tarleton – a plane ride to the pacific northwest for the WAC Outdoor Championships on May 12-14. The meet is hosted by Seattle U on the campus of the University of Washington.
The 2021 WAC Outdoor Championships were a spectacular conclusion to Tarleton’s first season at the D1 level. The Texans crowned four individual conference champions and captured the men’s 4x400m relay title in May in Edinburg. The program also saw 22 athletes earn All-WAC first or second team honors.
The Texans have 96 athletes listed on their roster. The program returns 52 competitors – 27 women and 25 men – from last season and anticipates the debut of 44 newcomers this spring.
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