With the climax of the indoor season behind it, the Marquette track and field team turns to the outdoor season and will look for a new set of athletes to step up.

Coach Bert Rogers said freshman high jumper Cheldon Brown and sophomore sprinter Stephanie Grant are two individuals to watch for development in the outdoor season.

Both athletes qualified for the Big East Indoor Championships. At that meet, Brown competed in the high jump and Grant in the 400-meter dash. Brown finished in 8th place with his jump of 6 feet, 7 inches and scored .5 points for his team. Grant failed to qualify for the finals in the 400 but ran Marquette’s second-fastest indoor 400 ever (57.52 seconds).

Grant improved her personal record in the 400 in each of the last three meets she competed in, with her finest performance coming at the Big East competition.

Hard work in practice and the progression in training are what Grant credits for her continued improvement in the 400. Grant said she needs to improve is her endurance.

“We worked really hard in the fall to build up endurance, but in the last few weeks we’ve been doing more speed stuff,” Grant said. “If I add a bit more endurance then I’ll be able to finish the race a little better, because right now I’m getting a little tired at the end. If I’m able to finish races better, that’ll help me reach my goal.”

Grant’s biggest goal for the outdoor season is to run the 400 in 56 seconds or less, something she thinks is very realistic because indoor times are generally slower due to the increased number of curves in the track.

Brown is another athlete to watch heading into the outdoor season. In his entire track career he has never completed an entire indoor season because he played basketball in high school. Despite the setback, he finished eighth at the Big East and has aspirations to improve, starting with his approach into the jump.

“You need to run a really smooth turn and transition into the plant in a certain way to get the most out of the jump,” Rogers said. “For lack of a better word, he was trying to muscle it rather than be smooth and technically sound.”

In high school, Brown’s coach taught him to jog up to the bar as he approached it, Brown said, whereas now it’s more of a bounce step towards it. Brown thinks it’ll enable him to jump higher — toward his goal of seven feet. That mark would be the second best high jump in Marquette history.

Time will only tell as to how far these two athletes will go.