The Raleigh Relays is an annual event held at N.C. State that brings together thousands of athletes from all around. The event will be held Friday Saturday at the Paul Derr Track.
Over the course of the season, the track and field teams will travel to compete in competitions across the nation, including meets in other parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, California Georgia, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon. The Raleigh Relays is the only home meet for the team and will be the only chance it has to showcase it’s talent for local fans.
For senior Kayla Lawson, this will be the third year she participates in the Raleigh Relays. She said that every year there are a lot of people and she looks forward to it because it is a chance for the entire student body to come watch the team perform.
Not only is the event an advantage for fans, but for athletes as well. Senior Reggie Reese said that having home meets takes some of the stress off the athletes because they do not have to miss class.
“Normally we miss class or a local event that will take place while we are gone,” Reese said. “[With a home meet] you can go to the meet and the go back to class, so you really won’t miss anything like notes or quizzes. Most of the time we have to miss those types of things and have to make it up.”
Raleigh Relays is a two-day event that runs all day Friday from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. and from 10 a.m. Saturday until about 6 p.m.
“This is a large meet and it is deep in talent,” coach Rollie Geiger said. “To win is a difficult task. It is all in preparation for the conference championships, so it is a building block for later on in the season.”
Geiger referred to the meet as a marathon because of the large amount of events that are set to take place.
“Normally there is only the 4x100m relay and the 4x400m relay,” Geiger said. “This event has the 4x100m, 4x200m, 4x400m, 4x800m, and the 4x1500m, so there is a lot of different events, plus the normal events. It is a huge meet.”
Not only will there be a lot of events, but there will be a lot of participants in each event. Each event is broken down into heats, and each heat must run separately.
“In the 100m dash, for example, I think there are 125 entries,” Geiger said. ” You only have 8 lanes and everybody gets a lane, so that is a lot of heats. That’s why it takes so long, somewhere near 25 minutes of 100m dashes, and there are 4 sections of 5,000, so that is an hour plus.”
The past couple years it has rained during the event, making running conditions unpleasant.
“Every year it always rains,” said Lawson. “I don’t like running or jumping or anything in the rain.”
In keeping with tradition, there is a chance of showers late Friday afternoon, but sunny skies are in the forecast for Saturday.
