photo by: Carter Gaskins/Special to the Journal-World

KU's Tayton Klein (1) gestures to the crowd before his long jump at the Kansas Relays at Rock Chalk Park on Saturday, April 20, 2024.

The Kansas Relays were a tough meet to get into this year.

Meet director Tim Byers recalled one conversation with a high school coach who, upon hearing that some of his athletes had fallen short of the tight 10.72-second cutoff in the boys’ 100-meter dash, simply remarked, “Wow, that’s going to be fun to watch.”

“The stakes to get in are the highest they’ve ever been,” Byers said on Wednesday.

The high standards for qualification, which also included 14 feet, 7 inches in the boys’ pole vault and over 11 feet in the girls’ event, should result in high-quality competition from top to bottom in the meet’s 102nd edition, which begins Thursday. But, as is commonplace these past few years, the Kansas Relays are also bigger than ever before, with 5,500 entries from 4,600 individuals representing 106 colleges and 447 high schools, Byers said.

“If you just take all that,” he added, “that’s a lot of people.”

Across all levels, the student-athletes will benefit from a number of fresh amenities at Rock Chalk Park, including a resurfaced track, new video board and additional discus cage.

These are more familiar to the University of Kansas athletes who account for dozens of those thousands of entries and will look to put their skills on display before a hometown crowd.

“We don’t get to do that a whole lot here in track and field,” said Tom Hays, KU’s associate head coach for vertical jumps. “In basketball you got 20 times to get it right. We get the Kansas Relays.

“We’ve got alumni coming, and they put a little pressure on me, but I don’t think the athletes feel it. They’re excited that mom and dad can come a little easier, they’re excited to show off to the high school kids, so our athletes, I think in general, all of them are pretty much ready.”

The heat sheets for collegiate events at this year’s meet feature a variety of familiar names.

Many are in KU’s highly touted pole vault squads, overseen by Hays. On the women’s side, sophomore Mason Meinershagen has been on a tear of late. Following an indoor season in which she broke a school record by clearing 4.47 meters, then proceeded to finish fourth nationally, she set a meet record at the Battle on the Bayou at 4.50.

“She’s just unbelievable,” Hays said. “She’s kind of an athlete that everything you add to her, she gives back. Her mind’s kind of new to what we do, so everything we do with her, it’s new and exciting. She’s not making a lot of mistakes yet, so she doesn’t know what failure is. I’m sure we’re going to make some sometime, but the sky’s the limit for that girl.

“She’s not done. If you want to see something special, she’s going to move into the next level of that event for sure.”

Meinershagen, who also won the high jump at the 2024 Kansas Relays, is accompanied by five additional Jayhawks among the invitational women’s pole vault field of 11 athletes, such as Avery Brooks, who won the unseeded pole vault last year.

On the men’s side, KU is similarly well represented with six members of a 10-man invitational field. That includes senior Brady Koolen, who recently won the event at the John Jacobs Invite with a personal-best 5.30; freshman Bryce Barkdull, who as a high schooler at last year’s Kansas Relays set a meet record; and senior Clayton Simms, the national runner-up at the 2024 outdoor championships who recently won an indoor conference title despite battling a nagging foot injury.

“He didn’t jump for three weeks,” Hays said. “I would say physically he was not prepared. But mentally, he was a pretty bad dude.”

Hays added that he told the team Simms “expanded his work capacity for success.” Byers compared it to Michael Jordan’s flu game.

“I say he’s not ready, but don’t count the kid out,” Hays said. “And he’s wanting to show off for the alumni, so he’ll be OK.”

Also in the men’s pole vault invitational are Ashton Barkdull, Jake Freidel and Anthony Meacham, a former conference champion himself.

Beyond the pole vault are plenty more familiar names. Dimitrios Pavlidis, a senior from Greece, has won the discus throw at back-to-back Kansas Relays, including a personal best in 2023. Sophomore Emmaculate Jemutai, last year’s winner in the 800 meters, will try her hand at the 1,500 this time around. Her classmate Sidney Smith will look to take first place in the 400-meter hurdles at a third straight meet in a three-week span.

Tayton Klein, a decathlete, is competing in three events: the discus, pole vault and long jump. He will look for a third straight Kansas Relays long jump title. Fellow decathlete and school-record holder Alex Jung is set for the discus and shot put.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg for KU, and it all begins on Thursday with Weston Van Camp in the men’s hammer throw at 2 p.m. and concludes on Saturday with the early-evening 4×400-meter relays.