By SAMI MCGUIRE
Student Reporter
Northwestern Oklahoma State University has added a new sport for women, track and field.
Track and field is a spring sports and will be here by spring 2019. Northwestern has records of track and field from over 30 years ago, but it hasn’t been an option for Rangers since then.
Although Northwestern is currently focusing on women’s track and field they hope to expand to men’s track and field in the future.
Preparations for the spring sport are already in full swing. Jill Lancaster, head cross county and track and field coach, is already working on recruitment. Lancaster said they hope to interest current college students, but are focusing their recruitment efforts on high school students.
Lancaster said “There aren’t really any opportunities in this area for female athletes to pursue track and field. It gives more opportunities. It will also help with our cross country program because you get athletes that do track and field and cross country.”
Northwestern is always looking for ways to boost enrollment, and Lancaster said she thinks this might help.
“If you just get one person per event, all of a sudden we’ve encouraged a great number of students that also want to pursue athletics, to look at Northwestern as a choice,” she said.
Track and field has 21 events: high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump, shot put, discus throw, hammer throw, javelin throw, heptathlon, 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, 400 meter dash, 800 meter run, 1,500 meter run, 3,000 meter steeplechase, 5,000 meter run, 10,000 meter run, 100 meter hurdles, 400 meter hurdles, 400 meter relay and 1,600 meter relay.
“Track and field is a sport that is, what I call, a three ring circus,” Lancaster said. “There is so much variety and it attracts such a diverse athlete. You’re not honed in to just one skill. You have so many athletes that maybe haven’t ever experienced these events, and they will have an opportunity to try them.”
Lancaster has experience in competing in track and field as well as coaching athletes. As far as coaching she was head coach most recently at Troy University, and prior to that she coached at the University of Oklahoma, Toleco University as well as being an assistant coach at University of Kansas and Kansas State University.
Lancaster also competed at the high school and collegiate levels of track and field herself. She won numerous titles throughout both, and still holds the OU all-time school record for outdoor 400 meter hurdles with 59.03 seconds.
“Speaking from my own personal experience, someone gave me a chance,” Lancaster said. “I ended up doing events I was good at in high school, but then I got steered into a whole new area. It gave me opportunities, it opened doors, just like education. You night think you know what you want but once you get in there you might go ‘ooohhh I like this’. And when you like something, life is good.”