Local track and field teams head indoors

WASILLA — Though the weather outside is still a bit frightful, track and field athletes will be cozy and warm this weekend for the first large-scale meet of the season, which will be held inside the friendly confines of the “The Dome” in Anchorage.

“I’ve been up nights,” Wasilla track and field coach Gary Howell said Thursday. “I’m super excited about this.”

A total of 25 teams are scheduled to compete in the Big “C” Relays Friday and Saturday, a two-day event that will give Alaska athletes their first chance to show what they can do inside the brand new, 174,000-square-foot facility, which is located behind ChangePoint church.

Spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of the action can reach the dome by taking the Raspberry Road exit off of Minnesota Boulevard.

The meet is being co-hosted by Anchorage Christian School and Grace Christian School, and is the first major indoor high school track and field meet to be held in Alaska this year.

After an unusually warm spring got athletes outdoors earlier than ever this year, track and field teams have been forced to move back inside by snowstorms that hit Southcentral this week.

“This whole week we’ve been indoors,” Palmer coach Dale Ewart said Thursday.

The meet will feature the majority of Southcentral Alaska’s varsity track programs, including all eight Cook Inlet Conference teams from Anchorage, every Kenai Peninsula track and field program and all five Mat-Su Valley programs — Colony, Wasilla, Palmer, Houston and Susitna Valley — set to attend.

Ewart said he’s looking forward to the meet, as both a way for his kids to get some work in as well as to see how Palmer can hang with the rest of the state.

“It’ll be nice to see where we stack up,” he said.

Ewart said he’s also interested in seeing how fast of times his team can turn in inside the climate-controlled dome.

“I think there will be a lot of good times,” he said.

Athletes running fast could be a drawback for coaches who have to make cuts for their varsity teams. Gary Howell said he’s expecting fast times, but said that could make things difficult when trying to compare runners on his team who don’t get to go to this weekend’s meet.

“I’ll have to make some tough calls with our distance girls, where we’re really strong,” Howell said.

Howell said he anticipates distance racers will have the biggest advantage in the dome because of the fact that athletes won’t have to be bundled up in tights that inhibit movement.

“When you get into those distance races, what you have to wear to keep warm, over four or eight laps it really inhibits your speed,” he said.

A distance specialist himself, Howell said he’s particularly interested in what promises to be a big showdown between Palmer’s Jake Parisien and Kodiak’s Trevor Dunbar, two of the fastest distance runners Alaska has produced in years. The two are set to go head-to-head in Saturday’s 3200-meter run. Howell said he recently went on a training run with Parisien, and had a tough time keeping up with the Palmer senior.

“He was chatting away the whole time and i was like, ‘if you’re gonna keep talking, we have to slow down,’” Howell said.

Friday’s events are set to begin at 2:30 p.m., with the preliminary running rounds on the facility’s six-lane running track. The girls’ discus and girls’ shot put events will be held between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., with the long jump and high jump events set to begin at 6 p.m.

On Saturday, the boys’ discus and girls’ shot put events will begin at 8 a.m., with running events set to start at 8:30 a.m.

Sprint and hurdles races will be broken out into two days, with Friday set for preliminary rounds and finals on Saturday, while the distance races and relays will be staged in heats, with times compared to determine a winner.

Contact Matt Tunseth at 352-2265 or matt.tunseth@frontiersman.com