BATON ROUGE -- A trip to the national championships will be on the line for the members of the LSU track and field team as they begin competition at the NCAA Mideast Regional Championships Friday at Tennessee's Tom Black Track at LaPorte Stadium.
The two-day meet will see the top-five finishers in each individual event as well as the top-three relay teams advance to the NCAA Championships, June 7-10, in Sacramento, Calif.
"The bottom line is that this meet and the next one (NCAA Championships) are what we have been training so hard for all year," said LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. "This is not the meet where we want to come in and try to do something different. I keep telling the team that if they can just do what they did to get here they will advance to the national meet."
In attempting to do that the Tigers and Lady Tigers will face some stiff competition as the Mideast region contains 78 men's teams and 81 women's teams that will have athletes vying for a berth to the national meet.
Six of the men's teams enter the championships ranked among the nation's top 25. The Tigers come into the meet with the highest ranking as they are listed at No. 3 this week. LSU will most likely be challenged by No. 5 Arkansas, No. 10 Wisconsin and No. 11 Tennessee in the team race.
"All you can ask is that every individual turn in their best performance of the season. If that happens the team standings will take care of themselves," said Shaver. "I have always said we are a better NCAA team than an SEC team so I am looking for a better finish then the fourth-place showings we had at the conference meet."
The Tigers have never finished lower than third at the regional meet, placing third in 2003 and 2005 and second in 2004. To win their first regional title they will have to knock off Arkansas who has won each of the three regional team titles to date.
On the women's side, LSU is one of seven ranked teams comprising the field. Auburn leads the pack with a No. 2 national ranking. The Tigers are followed by Michigan at No. 10, LSU at No. 11 and Tennessee at No. 16 in the top 20.
The Lady Tigers have won the first two regional titles in 2003 and 2004 and finished second in 2005.
Individually, LSU has 32 athletes and four relay teams that have qualified for the regional meet.
A trio of athletes and three of the relay teams enter the meet with times or marks that lead the Mideast Region this season.
Tiger sophomore Xavier Carter leads the Mideast in both the 200 meters (20.13) and 400 meters (45.26), but has opted to compete in the 100 and 400 meters.
Freshman Jeremy Hicks enters the meet with the field's best mark in the long jump after recording a personal best effort of 25-10 ¾ at the SEC Championships.
For the Lady Tigers, Kelly Baptiste, the defending regional champion in the 200 meters, is once again the favorite in the event as she comes into the meet with a season-best time of 22.76.
In addition, both the Tigers' 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams, as well as the Lady Tigers short relay enter the competition ranked No. 1.
The men's 4x400, who has never lost a race at the regional championships, will shoot for a fourth straight regional title as they look to continue this year's undefeated streak with an eighth straight victory.
Competition from the regional championships gets underway tomorrow at 10 a.m. (CT).