With all the distance runners going hog-wild over at BU, it’s easy for all the slow-twitch specialists out there to forget that indoor track’s opening weekend is about more than riding your cross country fitness into the post-postseason. For the sprinters, jumpers, and throwers on the team, it’s a coming-out party when months of event testing and countless hours in the weight room finally fall away in favor of season opening marks.

For many, if not most, the first indoor meets will be a glorified rust-buster. If you’re in the midst of a strength-building period in training, it makes little sense to back off and sharpen up for one weekend in December when you can just train through and compete again – and again, and again – in January. Unlike the distance events, where conventional wisdom is that you should pick your racing opportunities sparingly and leave plenty of room in the schedule for recovery, once you’re in a racing groove as a short sprinter, it can actually be beneficial to race your way through the meat of the season as you work on all the technical minutia that goes into a perfect seven-second race.

All this is our way of saying there weren’t many notable performances outside of Massachusetts this weekend – with one particular exception. Down in South Carolina at the Clemson Opener, North Carolina A&T junior Jason Holmes clocked nation-leading marks in both the 60m hurdles and 200m. His 200m time of 20.94 isn’t anything to write home about (although it is an indoor PB and only 0.05 seconds off his outdoor best), but his 7.64 victory in the 60H is intriguing, to say the least. That mark would’ve placed him fourth in last year’s NCAA final (although a few other guys ran faster in the prelims), and it’s a lifetime best by 0.01 second for Holmes.

Holmes made indoor and outdoor NCAAs in the hurdles last year, but he’s yet to make a final and his best finish at those races was 12th. It’s also worth noting for the “times don’t matter” diehards that Holmes also beat Dylan Beard, the hurdler-slash-viral Wal-Mart employee who won Millrose last year in the 60H and has a 7.44 PB (plus a 13.10 in the 110m hurdles outdoors), at Clemson. And with last year’s NCAA champ Caleb Dean departed for the professional ranks, someone will need to come in and take his crown.

Anyone placing giant bets on The Next Big Thing based on one good weekend in December should probably be a little wiser with their money, but it’s fun to speculate nevertheless. It’s far too soon to tell whether Holmes will sustain this momentum, but all indications are that the 20-year-old has leveled up. And given that NC A&T’s hurdles coach is two-time Olympic silver medalist Terrence Trammell, now in his third year with the Aggies, his talent is in very good hands.

So keep an eye on Jason Holmes. And remember: if he ends the season with a shelf full of national titles, we said it first. But if this take ages like milk, you didn’t hear it from us.

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