POCATELLO — While football season laid dormant this winter, two of Idaho State’s wide receivers ran their way to university records.

Veteran ISU wideouts Tanner Conner and Michael Dean spent their offseason competing with ISU’s indoor track and field team. Each set a school record, and Conner won a Big Sky Conference championship.

The two are ISU’s most notable dual-sport athletes. Dean has been a popular player on ISU’s football team for three seasons and earned his second all-conference nod in 2018. Conner has steadily climbed ISU’s wide receiver depth chart while his track and field success has elevated him among the Big Sky’s elite.

This winter, both part-time track athletes enshrined themselves into ISU history with program records. Dean topped Peter Amartefio’s 1976 record mark of 6.84 seconds in the 60-meter dash, gliding to the finish line in 6.74 seconds. Conner set the record in the 60-meter hurdles, finishing in 7.92 seconds to break the previous mark of 8.1 seconds set in 1987 by Darin Jernigan. Both 2019 records were set at the Big Sky Conference championships.

At those conference championships in February, Conner topped the podium by winning the 60-meter hurdles. Dean finished second in the 60-meter dash, trailing the winner by .04 seconds.

The pair led a landmark season for ISU’s indoor track team, which set three school records. Treyshon Malone added to Conner and Dean’s records with an all-time mark of 21.3 seconds in the 200-meter dash.

Now, Conner and Dean are back on the football field with spring practices underway. Conner continues to split his time as he competes with ISU’s outdoor track team.

“It’s not an easy task to do both,” ISU track coach Hillary Merkley said. “My props go to both of them.”

The 2019 indoor Big Sky championship was Conner’s second track title. He won the outdoor crown in 2018 by running the 110-meter hurdles in 14.01 seconds, advancing to the NCAA West Prelims.

So far in the young outdoor season, Conner has one individual victory and one relay win. He won the 100-meter hurdles at Utah Valley in late March and helped ISU’s 4x100-meter relay team win April 6 at the Pomona-Pitzer Invitational in Claremont, California.

The 6-foot-3, 210-pound strider splits his weekdays. Mondays and Wednesdays are for track practice. Tuesdays and Thursdays, he goes to football. He rotates his weekends between the two sports. He missed last Saturday’s football scrimmage to compete at a track meet, but plans to play in the final two football scrimmages of the spring, culminating with the Kragthorpe Classic spring game April 20.

Merkley credited ISU’s football coaches with being flexible and willing to allow Conner to take track as seriously as he takes football. Not all schools and not all coaching staffs do, she said.

“We don’t care as long as he wins,” Bengals football coach Rob Phenicie joked.

The winter indoor season was Dean’s first with the ISU track team. The 5-foot-6 speedster who electrifies Holt Arena with game-breaking plays during football season won the 55-meter/60-meter dash at the first four indoor meets he competed this winter, until taking second at the Big Sky championships.

Speed translates, but Dean’s success doesn’t come without effort.

“Mikey works hard,” Conner said. “I’ve never seen someone move so fast out of the blocks. … I love to see him go on the track, because he just goes out there and destroys everybody.”

Combined with the toll two sports takes on their bodies, Conner and Dean also have added academic stress. Dean called the spring semester “one of the toughest semesters I’ve ever had in college.” Conner is neck deep in athletics nearly year-round.

In total, Conner and Dean have been named to five Big Sky all-academic teams.

“It sounds hard on paper, and it’s even harder when you do it,” Conner said.

Merkley said both Conner and Dean have untapped track potential, even saying Conner could be a decathlete.

At the same time though, she said, she believes the work both athletes do in track benefits them in football, and vice versa.

For fans of either sport, that’s good news.

“Sometimes people think they only practice part of the time, and then they’re just good,” Merkley said. “They practice twice as much as anybody because they’re doing multiple things, and the things are so different that maybe it’s benefitting them in ways it’s not benefitting other people.

“They make us better.”