Roadrunners ready to repeat

Three seniors and a rookie led the Roadrunners to victory last year. Now, three rookies and a budding star hope to repeat.\n"We want to win," junior Jenn Wangerin said. "We expect to."\nWangerin, the race rookie last year and leader this year, has evolved into a premier competitor. Already, Wangerin has won the Individual Time Trial by a full four seconds and rode two of four qualification laps in leading the Roadrunners to an eighth-place qualification position. \nHer performances thus far have proven she's inherited the veteran role her teammates held last year. She is a former track and field athlete who has blossomed as a cyclist only since coming to IU. So, after learning the ins and outs of track racing and the Little 500 as a rookie just last year, Wangerin now finds herself teaching all she has learned to her rookie riding mates. \n"A lot of times at practice I'll explain all that I do," Wangerin said. "If I do something specific, I explain why I do it. I'll watch them at the track and tell them things that they need to be aware of. I give different advice on what they should be doing and thinking about.\n"Being new to the race, they have a lot of different things to learn."\nGone from the team are last year's seniors Amy Bridges, Leslie Gilmore, Randi Ritter and Sam Karn. In their place are a trio of rookie riders -- freshman Sarah Fredrickson, sophomore Emily Baltes and junior Mary Craig. \nHead coach Susan Gasowski said while the team lost a lot of experience, she has been impressed with the work ethic and rapid improvement of the rookies.\n"It's a little bit to our disadvantage because of the experience we lost," she said. "But I think through the work the team has done, they will overcome that. I couldn't have asked for a greater team to work with."\nFredrickson, a native of northern Illinois, joined the Roadrunners without much advance knowledge of the Little 500. When she began, she had no idea if or how much the team would train. Once she learned the intense preparation teams undergo for the race, she and her co-rookies embraced it, with the help of Wangerin's mental and physical pointers. \n"She tells us everything," Fredrickson said. "She's the one of us who knows everything. She told us how we should ride, how we should feel, different strategies, who are good riders and good teams. We're better tenfold because of it."\nThat the Roadrunners won the race only a year ago isn't putting any undue pressure on the riders. Rather, Fredrickson believes that just encourages the team and lets it know high expectations can garner big results. \n"We want to match our performance last year of course," Fredrickson said. "There is no pressure on us at all, but we are all striving toward that." \nGasowski said she believes this year's team fields just as much talent as last year's and expects another shot at taking the checkered flag.\n"It was awesome (winning)," she said. "I think we are at that level to be able to do something like that again. But it was so awesome. When I won in 1997, I was a rider, and it was just as good being a coach and winning. So, it was pretty cool"