IU gives solid showing at meet

The Indiana Invitational, the opening home meet for the No. 17 men's track and field team, was highlighted by the individual efforts of the athletes this weekend. Team scores were not kept during the meet, but the Hoosiers were able to earn victories in six events.\nThe meet opened Friday with the mile race, one of the highlights of the meet. The meet featured two won the latter in a time of 4:04.71, which met the NCAA provisional standards. The meet's open mile was dominated by sophomore Stephen Haas in a time of 4:11.23.\n"I was trying to run a little faster than that to get a faster provisional," Jefferson said. "But it was a good start in the right direction so I was pretty happy with it."\nAlso winning for the Hoosiers were junior Mike Minton in the shot put, junior Nathan Gooden in the 5000-meter, junior Nathan Purcell in the 3000-meter, and sophomore Aarik Wilson in the triple jump.\nWilson, an All-American in the triple jump a year ago, is undefeated in that event as well as the long jump in the season. Senior Hasaan Reddick finished second in the triple jump with a jump of 15.53-meter. Junior Russell Hollis also put on an impressive display Saturday, breaking the school record in the 600-meter dash with a time of 1:18.7 and taking second place.\n"We've been training hard this last week and we didn't really taper at all for this meet," Hollis said. "Your legs should be heavy, but we were able to run fast. That just shows we're a lot stronger." \nCoach Marshall Goss said that he was happy with the individual performances and that the team is back on track. The team had been struggling previously this season with disappointing performances largely due to injury.\n"(This meet) has to help the guys' confidence," Goss said. "We had a good two days of competing. There were really some good marks." \nWith three weeks until the Big Ten Championship meet, the team is hoping to take advantage of every chance to enter the meet with momentum. Next weekend the team travels to Indianapolis for the Cannon IV Classic.