Outdoor season begins Saturday for Washington State & Gonzaga, and Sunday for SeattleU...

Washington State and Gonzaga open their outdoor season this Saturday as they'll compete at the Dusty Lane Open meet in Spokane hosted by Spokane Falls CC.

For the Cougars, Saturday's meet is an opportunity for some of their athletes to get outside and into some competition, which will primarily consist of schools from Eastern Washington, Idaho, and post collegians. Eastern Washington University will not have athletes competing in this meet, but St. Martin's will cross the Cascades to compete in Spokane.

Jumper Stephan Scott-Ellis (above/photo courtesy WSU), who earned All-America honors in the triple jump at last week's NCAA championships in Nampa, Idaho, will contest the 100 and 200 meters, according to the WSU press release.

Courtesy of WSU Athletics, here's video featuring head coach Rick Sloan:



The University of Washington is currently in winter quarter finals this week, and will not open their season until next week in Los Angeles at the Trojan Invitational.

Seattle University, Seattle Pacific, Central Washington, and Western Washington will travel down Interstate 5 to compete in Sunday's Oregon Preview at Hayward Field on the campus of the University of Oregon.

For the Redhawks, this will be their outdoor season opener, while Seattle Pacific, Central Washington, and Western Washington have already contested meets outdoors.

THIS & THAT:

Here's a link to a column written by columnist Steve Kelley in Wednesday's Seattle Times on Katie Flood's experience after the Husky distance medley relay team won the NCAA title in Nampa last Friday.

In the piece, Kelley states that Flood was in testing for four hours after the race until she was able to produce a specimen. The fact that she had run a hard race, was dehydrated, and that she was sick the day of the race contributed to her not being able to produce a sample.

You can read Kelley's column here.

He wrote, "The right thing for the NCAA drug testers to do would have been to excuse Flood around midnight and ask her to return the next day. They should have shown more compassion. Flood could have taken her test after Saturday's 3,000-meter race, her final race of the meet."

The only problem with Kelley's argument (and he should know better, as he's covered the Olympics, which has stricter protocols than the NCAA) is that if you let anyone take a test afterwards, you undermine the credibility of the testing, and you open the door for potential cheating of the system--there are stories of folks who have snuck vials of clean or another person's urine into testing.

If this had been a basketball player on the winning team at the NCAA Final Four picked for testing and he was excused so he could go party afterwards, and returned for testing the next morning, you can bet someone would call the NCAA on it!

If Flood was sick at the time of testing, I'd question whether the NCAA had a doctor in the testing area who could have made a determination on whether or not she could receive IV fluids without affecting the integrity of the testing by creating too diluted a sample.

On the bright side, it's better that Katie learn about the post competition testing protocol at the NCAA than at a bigger meet like the Olympic Trials or world championships.