Track team races toward finish

The IU track teams travel to the Rankin Track and Field Complex in West Lafayette for the first one-on-one dual conference meet of the outdoor season as they face off against their biggest rivals -- the Purdue Boilermakers.\nThe meet at 11 a.m. Sunday marks the first match-up between the two schools since the indoor championships in West Lafayette where the Purdue men took second with 94 points and IU finished ninth with 44 points.\nThe women's team is the defending Big Ten outdoor champions, but lost to Purdue in the indoor championships as the Boilermakers took the conference crown with the Hoosiers finishing third. \n"The Purdue meet will be a great meet as all of our meets with them have been over the past few years," men's coach Marshal Goss said in a press release. "They will have an advantage as far as depth goes, but it should turn out to be a very good matchup and a great meet."\nThe Hoosiers split the weekend with men at the Drake Relays, the women at the Penn Relays, and various athletes at the Boilermaker Open. At Drake, the men had a win in the pole vault, the highest collegiate finisher in the decathlon and had a second place in the 3,000-meter steeplechase and a third place in the 800-meter run while at Purdue, a 68-year old IU school record was broken and five top three performances recorded.\nAt Penn, the women took third in the 100-meter run and the shotput and fifth in the 4x200-meter relay and the discus with five top three performances and two wins at the Boilermaker Open.\n"We're a little tired and in the process of tapering with Billy Hayes as a tune-up to Big Tens," women's coach Randy Heisler said in a press release. "Psychologically, we want to go out and compete hard, but also know that where it falls means nothing because this meet and Big Tens are completely different. We want to win, but more importantly, we need to be as prepared as we can be in two weeks." \nAfter the Purdue meet, the Hoosiers return home for the Bill Hayes Invitational next weekend and the Big Ten Championships the weekend after that.