The Lobo track and field team will host the last regular-season meet of the year Saturday at the Great Friends of UNM Track Stadium for the 14th-annual Don Kirby Memorial Invitational.
Mountain West Conference rivals Air Force, Wyoming and Colorado State will compete, as well as regional teams from Adams State, DinÇ College, Fort Lewis and Northern Colorado.
UNM assistant coach Mark Henry said it is a good preview of the MWC championships, which will be held May 12-15 in Las Vegas, Nev., but more than anything Henry said the meet has created a sense of urgency for the UNM squad. This is the last weekend athletes can qualify for the championships and only 28 men and 28 women will go - there are 88 athletes on the roster this year.
"We put up a travel list the other day of who, right now, would be going to the conference meet because we can't take everybody," he said. "So this is it. This is what it comes down to."
Henry said seeing the Falcons, Cowboys and Rams this weekend will not necessarily give any team an edge at the championships.
"We see our conference schools quite often at other meets," Henry said. "We pretty well know what the other schools have to offer."
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At this time last year, a spring snow storm in Colorado kept most of the MWC teams from traveling to Albuquerque, so the invitational was limited to only heptathlon and decathlon competitions.
The Lobos came home from San Diego last weekend with 12 season-best performances, including a personal record set by junior Willie Yuen in the triple jump. Yuen's leap of 47-06.50 was good enough for third place and one of his best collegiate turnouts.
Yuen said this has been his best season yet and his goals for this weekend are to break personal records in the long jump and the triple jump.
Although track and field athletes are accustomed to working on their own, they will have to be especially independent this weekend since the UNM coaches will be preoccupied with administrative duties as well as coach responsibilities. Henry said the team is prepared for that.
"They understand that we probably won't be able to do much coaching during the meet because we'll be helping run the meet," Henry said. "In most cases, by the time they get to the meet they know what they're supposed to do. So they're usually pretty comfortable with it."
Yuen agreed that most of the athletes know what to do in order to improve. He added another major factor that will affect the turnout is the weather and, especially for jumpers and vaulters, the wind.
The field events will get underway at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday followed by the running events, which are scheduled to start at 10:30. Admission is free for UNM students with a Lobo ID.
