Team hopes strong top 5 will help them to another victory

The IU women's cross country team will be competing in the 66th annual Indiana Intercollegiate meet Friday, hoping to get a second consecutive win in the meet and some additional race experience.\nHoosier coach Judy Wilson is looking to her top five runners for a winning effort.\n"Your spread between one and five is real important," she said. "Are we a team a minute apart or 30 seconds apart? I'm trying to get the team to develop its own race strategy because every course is so different."\nThe current top-five runners are seniors Mindy Peterson and Julie Shields, junior Kelly Siefker and sophomores Kristin Whitezell and Jessica Gall, according to previous race results.\nSiefker, who was the overall winner of last Friday's Cream and Crimson meet, has gained confidence from her win last week and said she considers this meet a good experience for her team.\n"I am excited now, and I could definitely be top five (overall)," Siefker said. "(The team) can get rid of preseason jitters, too."\nPeterson, a 2003 All-American performer, shared the same perspective.\n"It's basically a good chance for all of us to just race all together," Peterson said. "We've all been on different schedules, so it's a good starting point for everyone just to come together."\nThe meet takes place in West Lafayette, where Purdue is going to play host to a wide assortment of teams from Indiana. In addition to IU, the teams that have consistently run in the Indiana Intercollegiate are Butler, Indiana State, Purdue, Ball State, Notre Dame and a few other smaller schools from the state. Because Notre Dame and Butler will not attend this year, coach Wilson considers Ball State and Purdue as the main competition for the Hoosiers.\nThe meet will run two separate races -- a competitive race and an open race. The competitive race will be 6 kilometers and will start at 4:45 p.m., with the open race starting some time after. Each team can run only nine runners in the competitive race.\nJunior Allison Miller and freshmen Nikki Peterson, Maura Ratclife and Christina Barniak will join the top five runners in the competitive race.\nThe Hoosiers traditionally have fared well at this meet. Last year the team won the race and has placed in the top-three four consecutive times.\nMindy Peterson took sixth overall in last year's meet and was followed by Whitezell, who placed 10th. \n-- Contact staff writer Andy Romey at aromey@indiana.edu.