Track team heads to Illinois

Saturday the No. 19 men's track and field team travels to Illinois for their third dual meet in as many weeks. The team cruised to victory in their first meet at Michigan but fell to No. 13 Purdue and Ohio State last weekend.\nCoach Marshall Goss said he expects a challenge similar to last weekend. Though unranked, he said Illinois is still a dangerous team.\n"Illinois was only beaten by Ohio State by a couple of points two weeks ago," Goss said. "When you look at it across the board, it's going to be a competitive meet and should come down to the last couple of events."\nThe team will meet up with Eastern Illinois and Missouri as well as host Illinois this weekend. Goss said he was disappointed with the team's performance last week and hopes to use this meet to regain some momentum heading into the Indiana Invitational at home in two weeks.\n"We've got to prove that we can respond off of an effort that wasn't really there," Goss said. "As a whole, we didn't get the job done that we should have last week so we'll have to come back this week and see if we can."\nGoss said that while many athletes competed well at Purdue, others did not compete as well as he would have liked. He attributed this to a "me" mentality, as opposed to a "we" mentality.\nJunior Ryan Sarbinoff said one of the reasons some athletes have been faltering has been due to the strenuous training regimen. Many of the athletes have been feeling tired or sore as of late, which has taken effect on their mental toughness, Sarbinoff said.\n"We've been training through these first couple of meets," Sarbinoff said. "Coach has been getting us ready for two day meets, like the Indiana Invitational."\nSo far this season, the team has been led by younger athletes. Sophomore Aarik Wilson has won both the long jump and the triple jump in both meets, and sophomore Sean Jefferson won the mile Saturday. Sophomores Rodney and Russell Hollis have also been consistent in middle distance events.\nSprinting coach Ed Beathea said he thinks the harsh training wasn't a reason for the team's dismal performance at Purdue, and he expects the team to compete better at Illinois even though the training will not be reduced. He also said this is not the part of the season where the team expects to peak.\n"Our conference meet is at the end of February so that's when we really need to run well," Beathea said. "I think we're still capable of performing better than we did last week even though we are still training. It's a matter of mental toughness and focus, not so much the volume we are training"