Saturday’s Early Bird meet will be like any other meet for Eastern’s indoor track team, with individuals competing against individuals from other teams.

However, something makes this meet different.

This meet is known as a double dual meet because there will be three Division I schools; Indiana State, Loyola (Chicago) and Western Illinois, competing against each other separately.

Eastern will have three different total scores against each different school.

“Outside of the scoring everything else is the same,” said Eastern men’s track head coach Tom Akers. “The schedule of events is the same. You are competing against everybody at the same time. There is no real advantage to the athlete because you are still running a 60-meter dash against everybody else who is in the 60 meters.”

The difference comes at the end when they start to add up total points in each event.

For this meet each team is allowed to have two athletes score in each event and only four athletes per event will score for their team.

Akers thinks this double dual meet emphasizes team scoring over individual talent.

“Here you know at least two of your athletes are going to score in each event so you want to have two competitors in each event,” Akers said.

Akers said the reason the teams score this meet as three Division I meets is so that they can meet the NCAA minimum participation requirements.

The NCAA requires each Division I team to compete in at least six Division I meets in a season in order to qualify as an active Division I sport.

A team may compete in more than six, but half of them have to be Division I also.

By scoring this meet three times, the Division I teams are getting half of their required meets done at one meet.

“In the wintertime, sometimes you get snowed out of a meet,” Akers said. “You can’t get there or maybe the team that is supposed to come in can’t get there. So in this one competition you can actually get three scoring meets, which helps make sure you meet all your criterion.”

Loyola head coach Rick Wemple said there is also a disadvantage to this type of a meet.

“It doesn’t necessarily always benefit the better team,” Wemple said. “If the team goes one, two, three and four in the meet they don’t get third and fourth place because each team can only have two counters. It encourages a well-rounded team but doesn’t reward the team with the most depth.”

Despite the difference in scoring the athletes and coaches still look at it in the same way.

“A meet is a meet.” Said Eastern junior Clint Coffey. “I just look at each one as a competition and go out there and give everything I’ve got. But this is the first meet of the season and everyone is ready to get out there and see what we can do.”

Vincennes Junior College will also be competing in the meet on Saturday but will not be scored because they are not Division I.

“This meet is still important,” said Vincennes head coach Chris Gafner. “It is not really practice. We are still looking to compete. We are looking for a good performance. We are just not looking at the scoring.”

Eastern women’s head coach Mary Wallace said this meet is a good way to ease the athletes, especially the freshman, into the idea of competing.

“It is definitely good having a smaller meet to start out with instead of a huge invite,” Wallace said.