Washington schools head to Bay Area for Stanford Invitational and SF State Distance Carnival...

The Bay Area will be the destination of choice for seven of Washington's nine NCAA Division I and II schools, as Seattle Pacific, Central Washington, SeattleU, University of Washington, Eastern Washington, Gonzaga, and Washington State head south for meets at Stanford University and San Francisco State this weekend.

Six of the seven schools will be represented at the Stanford Invitational on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto on April 4-5, with most of the collegiate events happening on Friday, starting at 9 am, and lasting until 11 pm with the final section of the 10000 meter run (it's gonna be a long day at the track!).

3300 athletes from 114 four-year college programs, plus a bevy of high school athletes will converge on Cobb Track and Angell Field (above/photo courtesy Stanford University) for one of the West Coast's biggest invitational meets.

For athletes in the longer distance races, the Stanford Invitational has consistently been one of the best early season meets to run in, as historically, the meet has had calm weather conditions for distance runners in the late evening.

The link to the home page for the Stanford Invitational is available here. Flotrack will offer live streaming video of the meet ($).

A few miles north of Palo Alto, a few select runners from SeattleU, Seattle Pacific, and Gonzaga will run in the San Francisco State Distance Classic at Cox Stadium on the SFSU campus, which gets underway at 8:30 am with the 10000 meter runs.

Here's a link to the meet's home page, where links to live results and entries are available.

For those athletes from Washington State, Gonzaga, and Eastern Washington not making the trip to the Bay Area, they will compete at the Sam Adams Classic on Saturday April 5th, hosted by Whitworth University in Spokane.

In other action involving the state's NCAA Division I and II schools, Western Washington will host the WWU Multi-Events meet in Bellingham beginning on Thursday, and on Saturday, most of the Division II schools will be in Tacoma for the Shotwell Invitational meet hosted by the University of Puget Sound.

paulmerca.blogspot.com will be on site in Palo Alto for the Stanford Invitational.

NOTE:  The sports information offices of Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Whitworth University, Western Washington University, and the GNAC contributed to this report.