First-year track and field head coach Dan Waters has put together one of the best recruiting classes in the entire nation. Waters signed 29 athletes, many of which are the top recruits in the nation in their events. “We certainly filled a lot of needs, we felt like we touched on every area of the track team, and we’re probably going to add a couple more recruits to that list,” Waters said. The class will add to an already talented group of Crimson Tide athletes. Dwayne Extol ran the 400-meter dash this past weekend at the New Balance Collegiate Invitational in New York with a time of 49.24 seconds. He finished No. 26 in his event. Matt Joyner ran the mile with a time of 4.19.26. “There’s a tremendous bottleneck of talent between high school and college,” Waters said. “That was a three or four second personal record for Matt…What we’re worried about is getting better each and every week.” Even with the track and field team getting 12 top-10 finishes this weekend at the invite, Waters was especially impressed with the performance of senior high jumper Krystle Schade. She won the event by jumping 6-0. “She’s basically gone undefeated this year in every competition,” Waters said. “She’s playing against tough fields; she’s not facing mediocre jumpers. Even girls that she’s going to see at nationals, she’s been able to out-jump them, and it’s been pretty impressive.” With many impressive performances this past weekend at the invite, Waters said the team was a bit stagnant in some aspects. “We had a lot of top 10, top 20 performances at the New Balance Invite, but we didn’t feel like we reached one of our goals, which is to get better each and every weekend, and so we’re going to try to get back to that this weekend at Texas A&M,” Waters said. Waters came to the Tide from Texas A&M. When asked about what he expected the atmosphere to be like when he returns to College Station this weekend, Waters said he was excited about returning. “It’s going to be a good meet; they put on a really nice show over there,” Waters said. “They’re a good team, and it will be a good challenge for us. It’s going to be unlike any other meet this year.”