Maryville, Mo. – The men's track and field team at Southwest Baptist University opens their indoor season on Saturday, December 6. They look to hit the ground running (or throwing) as they travel to Maryville, Missouri for the Mel Tjeerdsma Classic hosted by Northwest Missouri State University. The meet is set to start with the pole vault at 6:00pm on Friday, December 5 followed by a full day of track and field events on Saturday beginning at 11:00am.
 
Leading the team for his 19th season is head coach Corey McElhaney. McElhaney is an extremely accomplished coach at SBU, receiving four MIAA Coach of the Year awards, one GLVC Coach of the Year award, and one USTFCCCA Regional Coach of the Year award when he led the women's cross country team to their first regional championship in 2015. McElhaney will be joined by assistant coach Mike McIntosh, who returns for his fourth season on the SBU staff. McIntosh specializes in coaching throwing events, like the hammer, shotput, discus, and javelin. The track and field coaching staff is made complete with assistant coach Sterlen Paul. Paul returns for his fourth year as an assistant coach and sixth year as part of Southwest Baptist's track and field program after spending his first two years as a graduate assistant. He specializes in coaching events featuring sprints, hurdles, and jumps. 
 
The Bearcats return 30 athletes from a year prior, one of whom is junior Andrew Rhoades who finished third in the heptathlon at the GLVC Indoor Championships last season. Rhoades also currently resides within the all-time top ten for SBU in four different events. One of these events is the 60-meter hurdles, where Rhoades holds the sixth best time in SBU history of 9.03 seconds. Also returning for the Bearcats is sophomore Marcus Jones. Jones finished fourth place in the 400-meter dash last year at both the GLVC Indoor and Outdoor Championships. He also holds four all-time top ten times for SBU, including his time of 48.86 seconds in the 400-meter dash at the PSU Gorilla Classic last year which is third best in SBU history.
 
The team was picked to finish 5th place at this years' GLVC Championships after placing 6th at last years' Championships. For another year, this will take place in Indianapolis, Indiana on the final weekend of February. The road to that begins this Saturday at Northwest Missouri, as the team looks to hit strong marks and build throughout the season. 

To receive news, updates, results, and more for the men's track and field team as they compete in the Mel Tjeerdsma Classic on Saturday, or for any of SBU's athletic programs throughout their seasons, make sure to visit sbubearcats.com and follow us on Instagram (@sbubearcats).