This past weekend the LOC track and field team participated in the inaugural SIAC indoor championships in Louisville, Kentucky. 

After a long indoor season the Magicians track and field teams concluded their indoor season  The young Magicians team has been rattled with injuries and entered the weekend  determined to get back on the right track.  Although the team didn't finish where they wanted to as a collective (8th),  the scrappy Magicians had a bunch of individual success.  It was such a great experience for the entire school because track and field has only been at the college for the past three years. In that time span, the program has had two different head coaches and task of building a program from scratch. With adding a program to a college comes highs, lows, and  plenty of growing pains. The combination of the highs and lows are what makes the most journey satisfying. 

The Magicians have one of the youngest teams in the conference and didn't have much collegiate experience entering the meet. What the team does have is a bunch of athletes who are hungry to succeed at this level. Prior to competing in the Indoor SIAC Championships the Magicians competed at Vanderbilt, UAB, Chicago State, and in the KMS invitational. Each meet the team has gotten stronger and has had several athletes break personal records and set new records for the college. "That's one of the benefits of going to a new or small program, you get a chance to leave your mark on history and be one of the first to do something, it's special", said head coach Terry Rhoades.

On the men's side Florida native Isaiah Bighem shined bright like a diamond, placing 3rd in the Men's Long Jump and 5th in the Men's 60 M. "Our student athletes did an awesome job representing our college", said Athletics director William Anderson. Bighem, joined sophomore Michael Styles on the all-conference team. Styles has shown potential from day 1 and is trending in the right direction. Although Styles and Bighem were the only male athletes to qualify for all conference, several others had impressive showings. Newcomer Prince Nde became the first Magicians to participate in the Heptathlon while Kelvin Rozier (Triple Jump) and Jacob Coleman (Long Jump) both had top 10 finishes, narrowly missing all-conference. 

The team will now shift all of the energy to outdoor season which is less than a month away.