Team impresses at Penn, Iowa relay meets

This weekend the No. 15 men's track and field team continued its season marked by meets against top national level competition. The team sent athletes out west to Iowa for the Drake Relays in Des Moines and east to Pennsylvania for the Penn Relays at the University of Pennsylvania.\nWeather cooperated in both places and helped the Hoosiers to a successful weekend of racing.\nSenior Adam Judge returned to his hometown at the Drake Relays and turned in an impressive performance in the hammer throw. He finished fourth in the event with a mark of 64.44 meters. \nThe team was led by the distance runners, as has been the case for the last two weeks. The mile relay team finished second at the Drake Relays to perennial distance program Stanford, finishing with a time of 16:44.74. The relay team featured sophomores in John Jefferson and Eric Redman and freshmen Stephen Haas and Sean Jefferson. \nAt the Penn Relays, the top performance was turned in by another distance athlete, junior Tom Burns. Burns was edged in the Championship section of the 3000-meter steeplechase by .14 seconds as he finished second in a time of 8:50.06. The time shattered his previous personal record in the event by about 10 seconds.\n"We're hot right now, running extremely well," distance coach Robert Chapman said. "The challenge is maintaining this and building upon it for the next five weeks."\nThe distance crew also earned an impressive performance in the distance medley relay at the Drake Relays. John Jefferson, juniors Ryan Sarbinoff and Chris Powers and sophomore Russell Hollis finished third in the event with a time of 9:48.63.\nSophomore decathlete Jake Wiseman was fourth overall, but the top university athlete in the event at the Drake Relays. He finished with a point total of 6,593, almost 300 points ahead of the next university athlete.\nSophomore All-American triple jumper Aarik Wilson finished second in both the long and triple jump at the Drake Relays. He finished with a mark of 25'8 in the long jump and 52'06.75 in the triple jump.\nNext weekend, the team travels to West Lafayette for a dual meet against Big Ten rival Purdue. Both teams hope to challenge for a Big Ten title at the Big Ten Championships on May 16 and 17. This will be the Hoosiers' first test against competition from the conference.