Today will mark the first time in 15 years Lincoln University has hosted a college track meet. The plan is to make sure it doesn't take that long before another one.
With the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association bringing its Outdoor Track and Field Championships to Dwight T. Reed Stadium, it will be the first time the venue has hosted something other than the high school state meets each spring.
"It's been something that we've been talking about for years," Lincoln athletic director Betty Kemna said. "The community wants to see our athletes. The biggest thing was upgrading our equipment. ... (Now that we have) it's something that we would like to do every year."
Just maybe not something as big as a conference championships.
"It won't be at this magnitude," Kemna said. "We're looking at some other track meets, where they don't do the (decathlon and heptathlon). So we might look at something more scaled-down to do on a more regular basis."
Tim Abney, who's been involved in the day-to-day planning of the event, has been a member of the Lincoln athletics departement since 1999, the same year the school last hosted a college meet. He said he's heard a common remark from members of the community for years.
"Everybody has been asking, when are you going to have a home track meet?" he said. "So hopefully this is a springboard to other things that we can do, maybe not the size of the conference meet, but a home meet."
He added it could take almost any kind of format.
"If we host a track meet, would we like to do it like Missouri does, where you have high-school athletes come in, too? It seems like a lot of them are doing that," he said. "That's another way of getting more poeple on your campus. I think that would be a great idea to enhance things."