BERKELEY – After a one-week break in competition, California track & field will split up the squad this weekend as they head to both the Stanford Invitational and the Mike Fanelli Track Classic hosted by San Francisco State.
 
The majority of Cal's squad will head to Palo Alto to compete at the Stanford Invitational on Friday and Saturday at Cobb Track and Angell Field.
 
After long indoor seasons, this will be the outdoor opener for a number of Bears including Camryn Rogers and Tyler Brendel. Brendel will be competing in the pole vault after earning second team All-America honors in the heptathlon during the indoor season. He will make his outdoor debut in the pole vault as he begins preparation to compete in the decathlon.
 
Camryn Rogers will be competing in her first official hammer competition since taking home the U20 World Championship this past summer in Finland. Since the hammer throw is not offered during the indoor season, Rogers competed in the weight throw, winning the MPSF Championship in the event. However, now she will open up her outdoor campaign looking to better the school record of 215-3 (65.61m) that she set last year.
 
The women's 4x100m team of Deshae Wise, Zion Corrales Nelson, Maisie Stevens and Jackie Patterson has recorded top marks during the first two meets of the outdoor season. They opened with a mark of 45.37 at the Cal Opener which was the best mark the school has recorded in the past seven years. They upped their performance at the Hornet Invitational as the quartet ran 44.67 to record the fifth-fastest 4x100m relay time in school history.
 
The men's throws group will be represented as Malik McMorris, Iffy Joyner and Joshua Johnson will compete in both the discus and the shot put. McMorris earned a spot on the podium at last year's Pac-12 Championship as he took third in the discus while Johnson scored points for the Bears in the shot put competition.
 
This will also mark the first 3000m steeplechase competition of the year for three of Cal's west regional qualifiers last year. Annie Boos set the freshman record and recorded the second best mark in school history last year and will open up this weekend. Takeshi Okada will take to the track where he earned a bronze medal at last year's Pac-12 Championship as he rocketed out to a time of 8:53.80 out of the slower heat. He will be joined in the competition by NCAA West Regionals qualifier Kai Benedict.
 
Outside of Cal's trio of steeplechase runners, the rest of the distance corps will head to Chabot College for the Mike Fanelli Track Classic. The meet, which was formerly known as the SF State Distance Carnival will begin on Thursday evening as Paul Zeiss, Ryan Peck and Marissa Dobry will compete in the 10,000m starting at 6:15 p.m. The Bears will also send multiple competitors in the 800m, 1500m and 5000m distances over the rest of the weekend.
 
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