Cougars leave the cold and Huskies open outdoor campaign at USC Trojan Invite...

Both Washington and Washington State will leave the cold and occasionally snowy confines of their campuses and fly south to Los Angeles for this weekend's USC Trojan Invitational at Loker Stadium on the campus of the University of Southern California.

For the Huskies, who will have no home meets this season while a new track & field facility is being built, this marks the beginning of their outdoor campaign, having taken last week off for winter quarter final exams, while the Cougars competed at last week's Dusty Lane Open in Spokane.

Washington's long throwers will make their season debut, with the javelin the event with the most depth for the Huskies, featuring school record holder Amanda Peterson and Brooke Pighin (left/photo by Paul Merca), a Pac-10 scorer and former All-American who redshirted last season on the women's side, and Joe Zimmerman and newcomer Curtis Clauson.

The Cougars will counter with their 1-2 punch in the javelin on the women's side, in sisters Courtney (Kirkwood) Simmons and Christine Kirkwood from Othello.

According to the start list published by USC, reigning Pac 10 100 and 200 champ James Alaka will run the 400 meters.

Both the Huskies and Cougars will go to Los Angeles without some key competitors from the NCAA indoor championships, as jumper Stephan Scott-Ellis of Wazzu, and the Huskies' Katie Flood, Megan Goethals, Baylee Mires, and Chelsea Orr are not listed in the entries.

Washington State has no competitors in the meet from 800 meters on up.

Courtesy of Washington State University, here's a preview of the meet with Cougar coach Rick Sloan.



Most of the area's schools, including Seattle Pacific, and Western Washington will compete in Saturday's Spring Break Open meet at West Seattle Stadium, hosted by Club Northwest. Other area schools, including St Martin's, will head to Tacoma for the Peyton Scoring Meet, hosted by the University of Puget Sound.