The Purple Aces head to their second-to-last meet of the regular season
NASHVILLE – The University of Evansville track and field team will look to take down more program records over the weekend at the Outdoor Music City Challenge.
The Purple Aces will go to Nashville for the first time during the outdoor season over the weekend for the Outdoor Music City Challenge meet hosted by Vanderbilt. UE had a small group participate in the Indoor Music City Challenge back in February. Evansville will bring its full team to the outdoor season version of the meet on Friday and Saturday.
The meet that begins the month of May is being held at the Vanderbilt Outdoor Track Complex and will feature 25 college teams along with a state track club. The Aces will compete against 17 other Division I teams, including fellow Missouri Valley Conference opponents Belmont and Murray State. The other Division I teams competing in Nashville include Alabama A&M, Austin Peay, Central Arkansas, Furman, Jacksonville State, Lindenwood, Lipscomb, MTSU, SIUE, Tennessee, Tennessee State, Tennessee Tech, UT-Martin, Vanderbilt, and Xavier.
At UE’s last meet, Evansville set three new program records with two on the women’s side and one on the men’s side. Sophomore Taylor Johnson (Evansville, Ind. / Reitz HS) reset the 400-meter record by more than two tenths of a second, along with her 200-meter record at the 2025 Gibson Invitational. The men’s 4×400 relay team also set a record with the team of freshman Myles Terry (Evansville, Ind. / North HS), sophomores Connor Shin (Bloomington, Ind. / Bloomington North HS), Raymond Felton III (Houston / Clear Brook HS), and Cedrik Flipo (Beloeil, Quebec) with a time of 3:18.93. The relay team broke a record that was set over 40 years ago back in 1979.
The Outdoor Music Challenge begins on Friday morning at 10 a.m. with field events, while the track events begin at 5 p.m. On Saturday, field events again begin at 10 a.m. while track events begin at 1:30 p.m. Aces fans can follow along with this weekend’s meet through live timing.
