TEMPE, Ariz.—The Arizona State track and field teams will debut the new Pac-12 vs. Big Ten Invitational on Friday and Saturday at Sun Angel Stadium.
In this meet, the Sun Devils will team up with the Pac-12’s Arizona and UCLA to take on the Big Ten’s Michigan, Indiana, and Nebraska in a meet that will be scored by conference instead of the traditional single-team scoring.
“This weekend we have kind of a unique format that Jeremy Rasmussen (Assistant Coach and Meet Director) has created with the Pac-12/Big Ten Challenge, bringing UCLA and Arizona as our partners, as we compete against our Big Ten counterparts, Nebraska, Michigan and Indiana,” Director of Track and Field Greg Kraft said. “That should be a lot of fun. And one of the things that we’ve tried to be sensitive to is the presentation of our sport. The running events, from start to finish, will be done—for track—in a relatively short time frame of four hours, and so I think it helps keep our fans engaged, that there’s not an excessive number of heats in the sprints and that type of thing.”
Friday’s events are slated to begin at 1:30 p.m. PT with the men’s hammer, while Saturday’s first events will start at 4:30 p.m. PT in the field with the discus, and the track events will start at 6 p.m. PT with the running of the 100m hurdles.
ASU will also be live streaming Saturday’s track events on thesundevils.com, and live results will be available for the entire weekend on FinishedResults.com. Updates throughout both days will also be available on Twitter by following @SunDevilTFXC.
Second-year Meet Director and Sun Devil assistant coach Jeremy Rasmussen created the format of the meet.
Thoughts on the meet from Jeremy Rasmussen
On the meet format and how it came together:
“Coach McGuire from the University of Michigan—he’s one of the women’s coaches—he and I were talking about trying to develop a meet that was shorter in time frame, able to appeal to the masses where it’s a little bit different but also team scoring, where track and field is trying to go towards more of, so we had some discussions of our experience when we were in the Big Ten together and now obviously with the relationships that I created when I was there in the Big Ten, trying to create the Pac-12-Big Ten meet and really it was just a lot of conversations with a lot of different coaches at that point, and throwing out the idea, seeing if people liked it, and really trying to have other people buy into it, and obviously we had these schools buy into it, but for us it’s a great way to get really good competition across the board, and I think the one thing we were looking for in teams was to have well-balanced teams from start to finish, whether it’s in the throws, the field, the jumps, the distance events or even the sprints. Everybody had good opportunity throughout the course of the meet, so that was kind of the brainchild of where it came from.”
On the potential for having this type of meet again in the future:
“I think right now it looks like the track events will end up running about three, three and a half hours long, which is still a good amount of time for a track meet. For us, we open the entries up for everybody to enter whomever they wanted. A way to make that work a little bit tougher for the competition is, if we wanted more teams we could cut the entry limit per event down to three per event or two per event or whatever the case may be. We’ve had talks of going back to the Big Ten again, will we add the SEC in? The Big 12 in? The ACC in? One of the power five conferences, and maybe do a two-team meet for each conference, or bring it to nine and do three, three and three. We’ve had some of those different conversations and so that’s something we’ll, once again, start now as we move forward throughout the course of the outdoor season and talk to the coaches out there to see what everybody would be interested in. I think after people will see this event and how good the results will be, more people will want to jump on board for sure.”
On the importance of generating interest in track and field with the younger generation:
“I think the biggest thing with track & field it’s definitely a team sport, but it’s also an individual sport in a sense. Track and field as a whole is really trying to move towards figuring out, “How can we create a team-scored environment? How can we get those rivalries going that you traditionally see across the board in other sports? For us, this is a great way to start that. We’ve got two great conferences, two very good track & field conferences going head-to-head on Saturday, and really trying to give us an opportunity to start the framework for something like this down the road. I definitely feel like, meets like this are becoming a little bit more popular more so in the world of quad meets or tri meets or dual meets, with teams—I think more and more teams are going towards those, but there’s still a want and a need for the individual-type meets that are out there that are distance-oriented or sprint-oriented or throws-oriented, so those. I don’t think, will ever go away based on our qualifying procedures, but I think these types of meets are a lot of fun for the student-athletes and the coaches alike. Hopefully the fans get more involved because they can really get behind a Pac-12 affiliation or a Big Ten affiliation, and really root for one of those sides.”
On ASU teaming up with its biggest Pac-12 rivals, Arizona and UCLA:
“It’s definitely a little bit of a strange feeling that you’re going to have these two teams on your team, so to speak, and you’re all working together to try to beat Indiana, Michigan and Nebraska, but I think at the end all the coaches are really trying to develop their programs early on in the season and see where people are at, so there’s opportunities that are given by each head coach to their individual program to really try to see where those individuals are at for later on down the road, obviously, developing conference teams, things like that. But at the end of the day, I think it’s still used as a meet for that purpose, but having the fun side of it in developing that partnership to try to beat the Big Ten.”
On the added benefits of having the meet live streamed via thesundedvils.com:
“I think live stream is a tremendous way for fans out there to jump on the Internet and be able to catch the meet. Parents, family friends from far away, maybe student-athletes that weren’t able to travel out with their teams can all log on and watch. I think it allows greater exposure for our sport, and that’s really what our sport is trying to work towards, is trying to get more web content, more TV content, and to have a crew here to be able to live-stream the meet is a tremendous asset for us, but it also allows our student-athletes to be able to promote themselves a little bit better, and our programs as well through the understanding that they can go back and watch that feed later on, they can tweet it out to their friends and family members to where typically you’re just saying, “Hey, here are the results, it’s over,” and now with the live-stream you can actually sit and watch that. I think that’s a really big step forward for our meets in general. We’ll have three live-streamed this year and one on the Pac-12 Networks on television. And I think having all four of our meets now on some type of stream or television broadcast is tremendous for us and our sport, and we will continue to advance it as best we can.”
