Both the No. 12 Texas Tech men’s track and field team and the No. 11 women’s team will compete at the NCAA West Preliminaries at Mike Myers Stadium in Austin Thursday - Saturday with a chance to qualify for the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

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The Top 12 competitors in each event advance to the national meet in Eugene, Oregon June 10-13.

"This meet is an incredible opportunity for us," Texas Tech head coach Wes Kittley said. "We just have to keep doing the things that got us here. We have to take care of business ourselves, and the rest will fall into place. I'm anticipating some great performances this weekend."

The Tech men are coming off a second place finish at the Big 12 Track and Field Championships in Ames, Iowa  with final total of 126.75 points, third most in program history, and the women, who tallied 103 total points, which also ranks third in program history, finished third.

The Red Raider programs combined for six individual conference championships and collected 42 All-Big 12 Conference honors.

The six conference titles are the most for Tech since 2009.

Kole Weldon led the Red Raiders by earning the title of the meet by scoring 26 points individually. It was the most points scored by one athlete since 2005. Weldon is the highest scorer for the second straight year.

On the women’s side, Hannah Carson was named Big 12 Female Performer of the Year and won the javelin and discus events in Ames.

Eight individuals have combined to break 12 different school records this season. In total school records were broken 23 times in 2015. Between the men and women’s programs there is a combined nine marks ranking in the nation's top 10 in their respective events.

Weldon, along with women Cierra White and Le’Tristan Pledger will be looking to qualify for the national met for the second straight year. The red Raiders took 11 qualifiers to the meet in 2014.

Senior Ja’Corian Duffield is looking to sweep the national indoor and outdoor NCAA titles in the high jump after winning the indoor title in Little Rock, Arkansas earlier in 2015.Duffield has the best jump in the world in 2015 with a personal and school-best seven-foot six- inch leap at the Texas Relays.

Both live results and a live webcast of the meet will be available at texassports.com.

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