STARKVILLE — When sitting in a recruit’s house, Houston Franks goes over what the Mississippi State track and field program has to offer.

Franks talks about the strength of the school’s facilities and the program’s coaching staff as well as its success in the Southeastern Conference and at NCAA championship meets.

In track and field, though, student-athletes also are concerned about the Olympics.

Franks, an assistant track and field coach at MSU, doesn’t push the Olympics, but the subject comes up when he talks to recruits.

“You can’t predict somebody’s going to be an Olympian,” Franks said. “You ask them about their goals and their aspirations and it comes up a lot. It’s nice to be able to say, ‘It can happen because we’ve seen it happen.’ ”

It happened again Thursday, when former MSU standout Marta Freitas ran a time of 4 minutes, 6.54 seconds and finished second in the 1,500 meters Thursday to qualify for the Olympics. She will represent her home country of Portugal at the Summer Olympics in August in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

MSU track and field will have several other athletes who will try to earn spots to compete for their countries, including Canada’s Brandon McBride (800), the United States’ Erica Bougard (heptathlon) and Curtis Thompson (javelin), and Brazil’s Rodrigo Rocha (relays). The United States Olympic trials begin today and continue through July 10 in Eugene, Oregon. McBride will get his shot Thursday in Edmonton, Alberta.

Going to the Olympics is the ultimate goal for many in track and field. Freitas talked about that possibility this past season prior to winning the 1,500 at the SEC Outdoor Championship and the NCAA Championship.

“It is my dream,” Freitas said. “It is all I want to do. It means a lot that we are all representing different international teams.”

As a sophomore, McBride won national championships in the indoor and outdoor 800 in 2014. He failed to win a national championship as a junior or senior, but he improved every year. He ran a school-record time of 1:44.50 and finished second at the NCAA Outdoor Championship.

McBride relishes the opportunity to represent his country in the Olympics.

“It is the highest stage an athlete can compete on,” he said earlier this month. “It means so much to me. It is always nice to compete for something that is bigger than yourself, whether it is Mississippi State or it is a whole nation.”

Qualifying for the Olympics and winning a medal are different things, though. Franks admitted it will be tough for any of the MSU athletes to medal this year. He said the best chances for McBride and Freitas will come in 2020 and 2024.

Franks feels McBride has the best chance of the five to win a medal this year.

Working closely with Freitas, Franks has seen how she overcame a fall that cost her a national championship in 2015 and put herself back on pace to have a chance to win a medal in the next two Olympics.

“She is getting a lot better every year,” Franks said. “She still has a lot of room for improvement. She is nowhere near her end game yet.”

Freitas, McBride, Bougard, and Rocha have exhausted their eligibility at MSU, but they will still represent the school.

Thompson, who won a national title in the javelin this past spring as a sophomore, could bring back a wealth of knowledge to MSU if he qualifies for the Olympics.

“At practice, that’s a pretty good badge of leadership,” Franks said.

Although it is a great honor to compete in the Olympics, some athletes are pulling out of this year’s event. An outbreak of the Zika virus began in Brazil in 2015 and the threat has persuaded some athletes to skip the Olympics.

Franks wants his athletes to compete, but he wouldn’t blame them if they decided not to.

“I’m sure that has crossed their minds, but that has not come up in my conversation with any of them,” Franks said. “I think at this point you worry about getting qualified and then if you have a concern about the Zika virus you address that after you get qualified. It’s something you have to be conscious of.”

Excelling in academics and having success at SEC and NCAA championships is a major goal of Franks and coach Steve Dudley. Having Olympians is more of a point of pride.

“It gives us some notoriety,” Franks said. “It’s obviously a wonderful thing to go into a kid’s house recruiting and say, ‘Hey, we’ve had these Olympians on our team.’ From a recruiting standpoint and from a publicity standpoint, it’s fantastic.

“You’re just excited for your kids. You see the hard work they’ve put in, and you just want to see them get there.”

Follow Dispatch sports writer Ben Wait on Twitter @bcwait

Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.