PROVO-The BYU men's track and field team peformed well in its first track meet of the season, the BYU Invitational, which took place on Friday and Saturday at the Smith Fieldhouse in Provo.

“This meet is almost like an inter-squad meet and helps us gauge where everyone is at coming back from the break,” men's head coach Mark Robison said. “Overall, I was very pleased with the meet results. We had some very good performances.”

Using only two-thirds of his approach, all-American sophomore Victor Weirich had an amazing first place performance in the pole vault posting an impressive 5.40m (17’-08.50). Weirich beat his closest opponent by 0.2m.

The Cougars also had a good showing in the high jump with sophomore Dakota John taking first with a jump of 2.14m (7-00.25), nearly two inches over his personal record.  Russell Nielson took second behind John, jumping 2.14m (6-08.75).

The heptathlon participates, although BYU was the only team competing, also saw great finishes from Joshua Weirich, who took first with 4979 points, and Kevin Nielsen, who took second with 4958 points.

Ryan Jones and Jared Ward performed well in the one miles race, taking second and third with times of 4:11.13 and 4:12.81 respectively and BYU swept the top three of the 400m race, with freshman Shaquille Walker taking first (47.96) and senior Christ Carter and Junior Rhyan Atrice taking second and third, with times of 48:27 and 48:44 respectively.

Both the men’s and women’s teams will head to Boise next weekend to participate in the Boise State Invitational on Jan. 13 and 14 in Nampa, Idaho.

Click here for complete results of the meet.

PROVO – After several months of training, the BYU men’s and women’s track and field teams will open up the 2012 indoor season at the annual BYU Cougar Indoor Invitational beginning Friday and continuing into Saturday.

“This first meet will be very low key, local meet,” women’s head coach Patrick Shane said. “It will give us a look at our power people and some of our younger, developing distance runners, as well as some of our freshmen and redshirt freshmen.”

Both teams are competing outside the Mountain West Conference for the first time since 1999 and will be looking to prepare for the tough competition in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. This first meet will serve as a barometer for the coaches as they prepare for the rest of the season.

“The purpose of the opening meet is to give us a starting point,” Shane said. “You can workout all you want but you really never know what you have until the team starts competing. Competition has a way of revealing character traits that are not always obvious in practice.”

The University of Utah and Utah Valley University will also be competing in the meet, along with a large number of unattached athletes. BYU dominated the competition last year at the Cougar Invitational and will look to start the 2012 season in the same way.

Field events, along with the women’s pentathlon and the men’s heptathlon, will begin on Friday at noon MST while all running events will take place on Saturday beginning at 12:45 p.m. The meet will conclude with the women’s 4x400m relay on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. All events will take place in the Smith Fieldhouse.